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Book_ 

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How To Be Saved 


By R. A. TORREY, D. D. 

LATEST ISSUES 

The Voice of God in the Present Hour. 

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The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit. 

Cloth. 

Difficulties and Alleged Errors and Contradic¬ 
tions in the Bible. Cloth . . 

Practical and Perplexing Questions Answered. 

Cloth . 

Anecdotes and Illustrations. Illustrated. 

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FOR REVIVAL WORK 

How to Bring Men to Christ. Cloth, 
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How to Work for Christ. Cloth . 

How to Promote and Conduct a Successful 
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REVIVAL TALKS AND ADDRESSES 

The Bible and Its Christ. Cloth, 
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Revival Addresses. Clo., pa.. 

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What the Bible Teaches. 

What the Bible has to Say Concerning the Great 
Doctrines of which it Treats. Cloth, 

How to Study the Bible for Greatest Profit. 
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FOR THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 

How to Succeed in the Christian Life. Cloth, 

J paper, 

How to Pray. Cloth. 

How to Obtain Fullness of Power in Christian 
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The Baptism With the Holy Spirit. 

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How To Be Saved 

AND HOW TO BE LOST 


The Way of Salvation and the Way of Condemnation 

Made as Plain as Day 



R. A. TORREY, D. D. 

Author of “ The Gospel for To-day” “How to Bring 
Men to Christ,” etc. 



New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 


Copyright, 1923, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



f 




New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


iff' " '0 

OEC -5 1923 

©C1A706180 



PREFACE 


T HE immediate purpose of this book is to 
make the way of salvation as plain as day, 
to men, women and children, with the ex¬ 
pectation that many of those who read the book, 
when they see the way, will take it, and be saved at 
once, and obtain eternal life immediately. The book 
goes out into the world for the same purpose that 
Jesus Christ came into it, “to seek and to save the 
lost ” (Luke 19:10). The average man or woman, 
even among well-educated people, does not know 
just what to do to be saved. When I was nineteen 
years of age, and a Senior in Yale College, I was 
awakened to the fact that I needed salvation, but I 
was totally ignorant of what to do to get it. I groped 
in deepest darkness. I had gone to perfectly ortho¬ 
dox churches every Sunday of my life ever since I 
was a very little boy, and had been years in the Sun¬ 
day School, could quote whole chapters in the Bible, 
had read the Bible every day of my life for six 
years, had read it through at least once, and had 
taught a large Sunday-school class; but I did not 
know what to do to be saved. I have reason to be¬ 
lieve that what was true of me then is equally true 
of the average man and woman, and the average boy 
and girl to-day. 

I have reason to think that these sermons, which 
are simply an exposition in language that any man, 

5 


6 


PREFACE 


woman, or child, can understand of what God has 
to say in His word on this all-important subject, 
make the way to be saved so plain that anyone who 
wishes to know that way can easily find it. Many 
(especially men) saw the way of life and took it 
when these sermons were preached to my own people 
this year and last. One man said to me one night, 
a few weeks ago, “ I am fifty-two years old, and I 
have been waiting to hear that sermon for thirty- 
four years.” He took the Lord Jesus and publicly 
confessed Him, and was saved that night. I think 
fie had never been in our church before. 

It is hoped that many who have unsaved friends 
will put this book in their hands, and that these un¬ 
saved friends will be saved at once. I shall pray for 
every unsaved person that reads this book, and that 
many may be saved through reading the book. 

I hope also that some of my brethren in the min¬ 
istry may be helped into a more effective ministry by 
reading this book. If any of them wish to borrow 
from these sermons to enrich their own, they are 
heartily welcome to do so. The truth in these ser¬ 
mons is not mine—it is God’s, and His servants are 
welcome to it. Many preachers say to me, “ I bor¬ 
rowed one of your sermons. I hope you are not 
angry.” No—I am glad: that is why I publish my 
sermons. God grant that these sermons may be even 
more abundantly blessed in this book than they were 
in the pulpit of “ The Church of the Open Door.” 

R. A. Torrey. 


Contents 


I. Why Jesus Christ Came Into the 

World.9 

II Tim. 1 :15 

II. A Good Man Who Went to Hell and 

a Bad Man Who Went to Heaven 22 
Luke 18 : 9-1 £ 

III. A Wonderful Contrast: Under the 

Curse of God, or a Child of God. 
Which Are You? .... 40 

Gal. 8 :10 R. V. 

IV. How a Good Man But an Unsaved 

Man Became a Child of God . .54 

Acts 11:13, U 

V. Saved By a Cry. 67 

Acts 10:13 

VI. How to Be Unspeakably Happy at 
All Times and Under All Circum¬ 
stances .83 

I Pet. 1 :8 

VII. Is There Any Man or Woman in this 
City Whom the Lord Jesus Cannot 
Save and Fill With Radiant Joy? . 102 
Heb. 7:25 

VIII. The Unpardonable Sin . . . .127 

Matt. 12 :31, 32 


,8 CONTENTS 

IX. The Blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, 

Cleanseth From All Sin . .139 

I John 1:7 

X. Paths to Perdition. 150 

Matt. 7 :13, 14 

XI. There is a Hell, and If You Don’t 

Look Out, You Are Going There . 165 
Matt. 5 :29 R. V.; Matt. 10 :28 R. V; Matt. 

23 : 33 R. V; Malt. 25 : 41 R. V. 

XII. There is a Heaven, and Whosoever 
Wishes To, Can Spend Eternity 

There. 183 

John 14: 2 - 6 ; John 17:24; Heb. 8:1; 

II Cor. 5 :1; I Pet. 1 : 3-5 

XIII. The Day of Golden Opportunity 

Heb. 3:7 


200 


I 


f 


WHY JESUS CHRIST CAME INTO 
THE WORLD 

“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all 
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world 
to save sinners; of whom I am chief .”— Timothy 
i: 15- 

O UR subject to-night is one that has engaged 
the thoughtful and earnest attention for 
years not only of theologians but also of 
sociologists, historians, political philosophers and re¬ 
formers. Some tell us that “Christ Jesus came into 
the world to proclaim the great truths of the Father¬ 
hood of God and the Brotherhood of Man/’ Others 
say that “ Christ Jesus came into the world to carry 
to completion God’s original thought in the creation 
of man.” Still others tell us that “ He came into 
the world to reorganize society on new lines, to estab¬ 
lish a new form of human society, the kingdom of 
God on earth.” Not a few tell us that “Jesus 
Christ came into the world simply as the proclaimer 
of new ethical principles by which men were to 
mould their lives.” 

But there is no need that we speculate or guess 
or argue as to why Jesus Christ came into the world; 
for God Himself has seen fit to tell us in the most 
plain and explicit words just why Jesus Christ came 

9 


10 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


into this world. You will find God’s own statement 
of why Jesus Christ came into the world in I Tim. 
1 : 15 , “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all 
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world 
to save sinners.” No one can mistake the meaning 
of those words. Listen again: “ This is a faithful 
saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ 
Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” When 
we stop to reflect upon the exact meaning and full 
force of this statement it will seem incredible. These 
words unmistakably declare that it was an interest 
in sinners, in the vile outcast, in rebels against God, 
in blasphemers, persecutors, perjurers, thieves, rob¬ 
bers, harlots, thugs, bandits, murderers, that induced 
the glorious Son of God to leave heaven’s joys and 
glories and to come down into this world. And 
these words furthermore tell us that Christ Jesus 
came into the world not to punish sinners as the 
holy executioner of God’s wrath against sin, nor to 
study them as a great philosopher. No, no, He came 
to save them. Does it look credible that the Son 
of God should step down from the throne of His 
glory, lay that infinite glory aside, consent to enter 
this world through the lowly door of Bethlehem’s 
manger and leave it through the shameful and 
dreadful door of Calvary’s Cross to save sinners? 
No wonder that Paul felt it necessary to preface this 
astounding statement with the words, “ This is a 
faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation” 
Paul well knew that philosophers and thinking men 
generally would not be ready to accept this state¬ 
ment of the purpose of the coming of that infinitely 
glorious person, Jesus Christ, into this world, and 


WHY JESUS CHRIST CAME 


11 


therefore he will call their attention to the fact that 
as incredible as this statement appears to be, it was 
God’s own word and therefore worthy of man’s un¬ 
questioning and absolute confidence and of all ac¬ 
ceptance. Yes, this is why Christ Jesus came into 
the world, this is the great central purpose of His 
coming, to save sinners. “ Christ Jesus came into 
the world to save sinners'* 

I. In Whose Behalf it was that Christ Jesus 
Came Into the World 

Notice first of all, please, in whose behalf it was 
that Christ Jesus came , in the behalf of “ sinners.” 
“ Sinners ” is not a nice word, and the fact for 
which it stands is even worse than the word. Sin 
is the foulest, hatefullest, most hideous, most loath¬ 
some thing in all the universe. Disease, leprosy, 
death, corruption, rottenness, putridity, and all other 
repulsive and disgusting things are one and all 
merely inadequate types of sin and its hideousness 
and repulsiveness. The sinner is the personal em¬ 
bodiment of all this foulness and vileness and re¬ 
pulsiveness, and yet Jesus Christ the Holy Son of 
God came into the world in behalf of sinners. 

Men and women who were sinners and who were 
conscious of the fact seemed to be the only people 
in whom Christ Jesus took any interest when He 
was here on earth. He “ received sinners,” He 
“ called sinners,” He “ ate with publicans and sin¬ 
ners.” He announced as His program, “I came 
not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9 : 13 ), 
and again, “ The Son of man is come to seek and 
to save that which was lost" (Luke i 9 -io)« A 


12 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


very prominent and eminently respectable and pro¬ 
foundly pious leader among the Jews came in a very 
deferential way to Christ Jesus one night to ask 
Him a few important questions, and He practically 
slammed the door in his face by saying “ you must 
be born again.” He would not even reason with him, 
but kept saying “ you must be born again.” In the 
very next chapter a loose, abandoned woman strays 
His way and He tells her all about the water which 
if a man drink thereof he will “ never thirst again,” 
and about the true way to worship, and about His 
own Messianic office. 

In the 18 th chapter of Luke a most attractive 
young man came to Jesus Christ, a young man who 
had led a most exemplary life, a life of morality and 
piety and generosity and culture, and Christ sends 
him away sorrowful by an uncompromising demand 
that he sell all his honestly gotten possessions and 
give the proceeds to the poor, and in the very next 
chapter He tells a notorious, money-grasping old sin¬ 
ner named Zacchaeus that He wants to put up at 
his house. 

In the 7 th chapter of Luke, Jesus Christ hits a 
very respectable and highly esteemed and hospitable 
gentleman named Simon a slap in the face, and al¬ 
most in the same breath tenderly says to a disrepu¬ 
table woman of the town “ Thy sins are forgiven— 
go in peace.” 

All of His interest was in sinners, all His tender¬ 
ness was for sinners, all His infinitely gracious in¬ 
vitations were for sinners. Oh, how wondrously 
kind and gentle He was to sinners. But how merci¬ 
less He was to moralists, to all who boasted of their 


WHY JESUS CHRIST CAME 


13 


own goodness, of their religion and their righteous¬ 
ness, stripping off the veneering of decency that cov¬ 
ered the real rottenness within, calling them “ white¬ 
washed sepulchres,” “ hidden graves,” enclosures of 
rottenness and corruption and dead men’s bones, 
“ generation of snakes.” 

Christ Jesus came to save sinners. Do you wish 
Christ Jesus to take an interest in you and to save 
you? Well, then, you must take your place before 
Him as a sinner, just a commonplace, unadorned, un¬ 
varnished, inexcusable, self-confessed sinner. Not a 
respectable sinner, no; nor a genteel sinner, nor a 
cultivated sinner, no; nor an attractive sinner, no; 
nor an amiable sinner, no; but just a plain, unadorned 
sinner; a poor, miserable, vile, guilty, worthless, hell¬ 
deserving sinner. Do you know that more people are 
shut out of Jesus Christ’s saving grace and out of 
pardon and out of heaven and out of eternal life be¬ 
cause they won’t get right down before Christ Jesus 
as sinners, plain, ugly, wretched sinners, than by any¬ 
thing else? Far more people are shut out of heaven 
by the pride that keeps them from crying “ God be 
merciful to me a sinner,” than are shut out by the 
enormity of their sins or by the stubbornness of their 
infidelity. It is as true to-day as it was when Jesus 
Christ first said it to the moralists of His own day, 
“the publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of 
heaven before you” (Matt. 21 : 31 ). 

One night in an after-meeting in Chicago, as I 
passed through the innermost inquiry room, a lady 
of large culture sat there among the inquirers. This 
woman had taken two or three university degrees, 
she was in professional life and was one of the mgst 


14 


HOW TO BE SAVED 

/ 


highly cultured women who attended our church. 
As I passed by she said, “ Mr. Torrey, will you 
speak with me?” I replied, “ If you will wait a few 
moments until I speak to these poor creatures over 
yonder,” looking toward some poor outcasts grouped 
together in a corner of the room, “ I will come back 
and speak with you.” These poor outcasts knew 
that they were sinners and they accepted Jesus 
Christ. Then I came back to the lady and drawing - 
up a chair sat down in front of her and asked her 
“ What can I do for you? ” She replied, “ Mr. Tor¬ 
rey, I have not a satisfactory Christian experience.” 
I replied, “ I do not think you have any Christian 
experience at all.” “ Why,” she replied, “ I am a 
church member.” I answered, “ Unfortunately that 
does not prove anything. I am sorry to say that I 
have known many church members whom I could 
not believe were really saved.” “ But,” she said, “ I 
am a Sunday-school teacher.” I said, “ Unfortu¬ 
nately that does not prove anything, I am sorry to 
say I have known not a few Sunday-school teachers 
of whose salvation I was not at all sure.” “ But,” 
she replied, “ I am the widow of a minister,” 
“ Well,” I said, “ unfortunately even that fact does 
not prove anything. I do not read anywhere in the 
Bible that anyone is saved by marrying a parson.” 

“ Now,” I said, “ I do not believe that you ever 
in all your life came to God as a poor, vile, worth¬ 
less, miserable, hell-deserving sinner, not essentially 
better than those poor creatures over in the corner.” 
She immediately straightened up and her eyes flashed 
as she replied, “ No, I never did, for I am not.” I 
looked at her and quietly said, “You are about as 


WHY JESUS CHRIST CAME 


15 


full of spiritual conceit as anyone I ever met.” She 
gasped out, “Mr. Torrey, you are cruel.” “ No,” I 
replied, “ I am kind. It is not cruel, it is kind, to 
tell people the truth.” “ Now,” I said, “ you are a 
physician, are you not?” She said, “Yes, I am.” 
“ Suppose you had a patient who had a great big 
tumor and you took a sharp knife and cut it out. 
Would that be cruel? ” “ No,” she answered, “ that 
would be the kindest thing I could do.” “ Well,” I 
said, “ you have a great big tumor of spiritual pride 
and by the grace of God I will cut it out to-night.” 
The woman had sense even if she was proud. She 
immediately dropped on her knees and came to God 
as a poor, vile, worthless, miserable, hell-deserving 
sinner, and she got “ a satisfactory Christian experi¬ 
ence.” But there are some of you who have never 
done it, and some of you who are determined that 
you never will do it. Well, you will or else you will 
spend eternity in hell. 

Come, my genial, upright, polished, perfect gentle¬ 
man, you must get down and take your place as a 
sinner, if Jesus Christ is to take any interest in you 
and save you. Come, my fine lady, with fair and 
attractive life and beautiful character and generous 
culture and winsome personality and an honoured 
place in society, you, too, have got to get down in 
your right place before God as a sinner if Christ 
Jesus is to save you. Yes, you must get down right 
alongside your sister from the slums, for “ Christ 
Jesus came into the world to save sinners ” and He 
saves nobody else. Are you one? Are you a real, 
genuine sinner? If not, Christ did not come for 
you. Oh, we have thousands in our churches to-day 


16 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


who have never taken their places as lost sinners be¬ 
fore Jesus Christ, and, of course, they have never 
been saved. 

Over the door of the Moody Church in Chicago, 
when I was pastor, these words were engraved in 
the stone, “ Welcome to this house of God are 
strangers and the poor.” I fear that motto kept a 
good many people away from that church. They 
preferred to go where the rich and cultured were 
especially welcome. But suppose that motto had 
read, “ This church is for sinners.” Would you like 
to have gone to that church? But if this church in 
which we are met to-night is to be a true church 
of Jesus Christ that is whom it is for, for “ sin¬ 
ners ”: “ Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
sinners” 

But while this great and wonderful text takes 
away all hope from the mere moralist, while it says 
to every man and woman who is unwilling to take 
their places before Christ as sinners, “ Christ Jesus 
is not for you, the Gospel is not for you, the Bible 
is not for you, heaven is not for you,” on the other 
hand, how wide this text throws open the door for 
all who are sinners and who know it. Yes, even 
for the vilest. Listen again, “ This is a faithful 
saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ 
Jesus came into the world to save sinners!’ How 
many a man and woman there is to-day who is say¬ 
ing, “ Christ Jesus is not for me, salvation is not for 
me, eternal life is not for me, the inheritance incor¬ 
ruptible, undefiled and that fadeth not away is not 
for me.” Why not? “ Oh, I am so great a sinner.” 
Listen, “ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all 


WHY JESUS CHRIST CAME 


17 


acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world 
to save sinners.” Do you hear that? It was in be¬ 
half of sinners that Jesus Christ came into this 
world, and because you are just what you are, a 
“ sinner ” a grievous, way-down, miserable, hopeless, 
helpless, hell-deserving sinner, it is just that fact 
that makes Christ Jesus for you, and heaven for you, 
and salvation for you, and eternal life for you: 
“ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta¬ 
tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
sinners ” I see passing before me as I speak a long, 
long line of men and women whom I have met in 
different parts of the world who seemed utterly 
beyond hope, and who considered themselves utterly 
beyond hope, because they had gone so deep into sin 
and remained so long in sin, but who by the power 
of this text were led to put their trust in the Saviour 
who came into the world to save “sinners” Yes, 
“ Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners ” 
and He does it. And He can do it for anyone here 
to-night who will take his place as a lost sinner. But 
He cannot do it for anyone else. 

II. What Was the Purpose of Christ Jesus 
Concerning Sinners? 

We see then it was in behalf of sinners that Christ 
Jesus came into the world, but What Was His Pur¬ 
pose Concerning Sinnersf To Save. “ Christ Jesus 
came into the world to save sinners.” As already 
suggested, He did not come into the world to punish 
sinners. Neither did He come to condemn sinners. 
He did not come to upbraid sinners. He did up¬ 
braid certain classes of sinners sometimes but that 


18 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


was not what He came for, that was merely an inci¬ 
dent. He did not come to reform sinners. That 
is a hopeless and worthless task. It is like painting 
the cheeks of a corpse. It will not keep the corpse 
from rotting. He did not come to help sinners, to 
help them to do better. Ah, friends, a sinner’s case 
is so desperate that he needs something more than 
help, something that goes far deeper than help. He 
came to save sinners, to redically, thoroughly and 
eternally save sinners. To save them freely, fully, 
and forever. 

i. First of all, He came to save sinners from the 
guilt of their sins. There is a Holy God up yonder, 
an infinitely Holy God, and when a man once sins 
he is a guilty sinner before yonder Holy God. His 
sins avert the face of that Holy Being from him, his 
sin separates between him and that Holy God, and 
the wrath of that Holy God is kindled against him, 
though that God loves him. Christ Jesus came into 
the world to save us from our guilt, to save us from 
the wrath of God, and to give our guilty consciences 
peace. 

How did Jesus save sinners from their guilt? 
Listen to God’s own answer to that question, 
“ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, 
having become a curse for us: for it is written, 
Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree ” (Gal. 
3:13). He saved us from the guilt of sin by taking 
our guilt upon Himself, by bearing our penalty in 
His own body on the Cross of Calvary. The curse 
was your due and mine; but Jesus Christ, God mani¬ 
fested in the flesh, took that curse upon Himself. 
Listen again, “ All we, like sheep, have gone astray; 


WHY JESUS CHRIST CAME 


19 


we have turned everyone to his own way; and Je¬ 
hovah hath made to strike on Him (that is, on Jesus 
Christ) the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6, literally 
translated). By His atoning death Jesus Christ put 
away the sin that stood between you and God. By 
His atoning death, by the shedding of His blood, 
God’s wrath at my sin and at your sin was settled 
and settled forever. By His death my guilty con¬ 
science finds peace. Let me say that this is with me 
not a mere matter of theological opinion but a mat¬ 
ter of glad and certain experimental knowledge. 
Christ Jesus saves from the guilt and penalty of sin, 
I know that. I do not merely think so or hope so, 
I know it. I know that Christ Jesus “ has power 
on earth to forgive sins ” because He has forgiven 
my sins, and they were very many and they were 
very great. And I know that through His atoning 
death, which I have accepted as the whole ground 
and the sole ground of my salvation, every sin of 
mine has been blotted out forever, and that there is 
not a cloud between me and the Infinitely Holy God 
in whose presence the very seraphim veil their faces 
and their feet. 

2. But Christ Jesus came not merely to save the 
sinner from the guilt of his sins and from the 
penalty of his sins, but to save him also from the 
power of sin. Jesus Christ does save from sin’s 
guilt and from sin’s punishment, He does save from 
a guilty conscience and from hell, but thank God 
that is not all, He saves from sin's power. Our 
Lord’s own words bring this out with great clearness 
and force, He Himself says in Jno. 8:34, “Every 
one that committeth sin is the slave of sin.” Now 


20 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


we all know this is true. Oh, how many of us know 
to-night from bitterest experience the slavery of sin, 
the slavery, e. g., of intemperance, or the slavery of 
lust, or the slavery of the greed for gold, or the 
slavery of a bad temper, or the slavery of an 
unruly tongue, or the slavery of a mean dis¬ 
position, or the slavery of unclean thoughts. Yes, 
we have all known something about the bondage of 
sin, but listen to what Jesus Christ says two verses 
further on, “ If therefore the Son shall make you 
free, ye shall be free indeed” (Jno. 8:36). Jesus 
Christ the Son of God, the Saviour who died on 
Calvary’s Cross to make pardon possible, rose from 
the dead, and is to-day a living Saviour, and has 
“all power in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28: 19) 
and is therefore able to save to the uttermost, not 
merely from the uttermost but to the uttermost all 
those who come unto God through Him (Heb. 
7:25) ; and He saves us from all the slavery of sin. 
He saves us from sin’s power as well as from sin’s 
guilt. That is what He came to do, that is what 
He does do. 

Paul, who wrote the words of my text, knew from 
personal experience the power of Christ Jesus to 
save not merely from the guilt of sin but to save 
from the power of sin as well. Paul had known the 
bondage of sin, the awful, grinding slavery of sin. 
He gives us a leaf from his autobiography in the 
7th chapter of Romans. He tells us of how he had 
found the law of God, and how earnestly he had 
tried to keep it, and how utterly he had failed. He 
had tried to break away from sin. The struggle as 
described in Romans seven was a hard one, a deter- 


WHY JESUS CHRIST CAME 


21 


mined one, but it resulted in utter failure. Paul 
tells us that the more he tried to break away from 
sin the more helpless he found himself until at last, 
in utter despair, he cried, “ O wretched man that I 
am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this 
death ? ” He seemed to himself like one chained for¬ 
ever to the “ dead,” stinking “ body ” of sin, but 
when he cried, “ Who shall deliver me from the 
body of this death ” he got his answer at once. 
You will find the answer in the next verse, “ I thank 
God through Jesus Christ our Lord ” (Rom. 
7:24, 25). 

Christ Jesus came into the world in behalf of sin¬ 
ners. He came to save sinners. He came to save 
them from the guilt and penalty and power of sin. 
He does save from the guilt and penalty and power 
of sin whoever comes to Him and puts his trust in 
Him. He will save any sinner who will believe on 
Him, who will just put their case in His hands. He 
will save them right now. He will not save anyone 
who will not come to Him and come as a sinner, but 
He will save, at once, freely, and fully and forever, 
every man, woman, and child who will come to Him 
and confess that they are sinners and put their trust 
in Him as their Saviour from the guilt and power 
of sin. He will save them freely, fully, and for¬ 
ever. Will you let Him save you? If any man, 
woman, or child, goes out of this building to-night 
unsaved, you will have no one to blame but your¬ 
self. “ This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all 
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world 
to save sinners.” Let Him save you right now. 


II 


A GOOD MAN WHO WENT TO HELL AND 
A BAD MAN WHO WENT TO HEAVEN 

“And he spake also this parable unto certain who 
trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and 
set all others at nought: Tzvo men went up into the 
temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a 
publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with 
himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as the 
rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even 
as this publican. I fast twice in the week; I give 
tithes of all that I get. But the publican, standmg 
afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto 
heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God, be thou 
merciful to me, a sinner. I say unto you, This man 
went down to his house justified rather than the 
other: for everyone that exalteth himself shall be 
humbled; but he that humbleth himself shall be 
exalted.” — Luke 18:9-14. 

S OME of you will think I have this subject 
twisted and that it ought to read, “A Good 
Man who went to Heaven and a Bad Man who 
went to Hell;” but the subject, as I have given it, is 
exactly right. Jesus Christ Himself is my authority 
for saying that this good man went to hell and that 
this bad man went to heaven. He has given us the 
picture of this good man and of this bad man, 

22 


A GOOD MAN AND A BAD MAN 23 


and Jesus Himself is responsible for the statement 
that the good man was lost and that the bad man 
was saved. Let me read you our Lord’s own words 
about it, Luke 18:9-14: “And he spake also this 
parable unto certain who trusted in themselves that 
they were righteous, and set all others at nought: 
Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one 
a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee 
stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank 
thee, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, 
unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast 
twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get. 
But the publican, standing afar off, would not lift 
up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote his 
breast, saying, God, be thou merciful to me, a sin¬ 
ner. I say unto you, This man went down to his 
house justified rather than the other: for every one 
that exalteth himself shall be humbled; but he that 
humbleth himself shall be exalted.” Jesus here 
definitely declares that the publican “ went down to 
his house justified,” and a man who is “ justified ” 
before God is saved, he is sure to go to Heaven, and 
on the other hand Jesus Christ tells us with equal 
plainness that the Pharisee went down to his house 
“unjustified,” and a man who is unjustified before 
God is sure to go to hell. Now let us look at the 
two men of whom our Lord Jesus has drawn so 
graphic and so instructive a picture in a very few 
but very telling words. 

I. The Good Man Who Went to Hell 

We will look first at the Good Man who went to 
Hell. 


24 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


1. We notice first of all that, this man who was 
unjustified, and therefore went to hell, was a moral 
man, a clean man in his personal habits. He could 
look right up into the face of God Who knows our 
every act, our secret acts, done under cover of the 
night as well as our public acts open for all to see, 
and our secret thoughts, and could say, “ I am not 
an adulterer. I am a clean man morally.” It is a 
good thing to be able to say that. Some of you men 
here to-night could not say it. God pity you. You 
might say it to me, but you could not say it to God, 
you would not dare. But this man could say it and 
say it to God; and yet he was not saved. 

There are a good many men in our day who are 
building their hopes for eternity on their personal 
purity, on the fact that their actions have not been 
defiled by one of the 7 most loathsome of all sins in 
any of its forms, that their speech is clean, that their 
imagination is pure, that they never read the vile 
literature so prevalent in our day, and never fre¬ 
quent the hellish dens called “ vaudeville shows ” 
and disgusting movies that play on a harp with a 
single string, and that string a rotten old string, sex 
problems. Well, personal purity is a good thing; 
but it won’t save anyone, and if that is all you have 
to build your hope of Heaven upon you are lost and 
headed straight for hell. 

2. In the second place, we notice that this man 
was square in his business relations. He could look 
up into God’s face and say, “ I am not an extor¬ 
tioner,” that is, a money grabber, rapacious, avari¬ 
cious. This man did not charge exorbitant rates of 
interest. He did not freeze other men out of busi- 


A GOOD MAN AND A BAD MAN 25 


ness. He did not oppress his employees in their 
wages. He did not cheat his customers. It is a 
good thing to be able to say what this man said. 
There are a good many men here to-night who could 
not say what he said. Some of you found a man 
in a corner and you had a little money to loan, and 
oh, how you squeezed your poor brother. Some of 
you needed to have work done and you found a poor 
fellow starving, and you got him to do a dollar’s 
worth of work for fifty cents, and even then you 
called it “ charity.” Some of you took advantage 
of a man’s or woman’s ignorance and charged them 
two prices for what you sold them and called it 
“ business enterprise,” but God called it “ stealing.” 
Then how many “ eminently respectable citizens ” 
there are to-day building up great business enter¬ 
prises by crowding someone else to the wall. Their 
vast fortunes are built upon the ruined business en¬ 
terprises of others, upon broken hearts and desolated 
homes, and God only knows what all. It is a great 
thing in days like these to be able to look up into 
God’s face and say what this man said, “ I am not 
rapacious, I am not a money grabber, I am not an 
extortionerbut it won’t save you. This man could 
say it; but Jesus Christ says he was lost for all that, 
that he went down to his house unjustified, that he 
went to hell after all. 

There are a good many here to-night who are 
building their hopes for eternity upon the fact they 
are perfectly honest in business, that they “believe 
in the Square Deal ” and “ practise the Square 
Deal,” themselves; but if you have no better founda- 


26 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


tion than that for your hope of Heaven you are a 
lost man. 

3. We notice next that this man was a highly 
respected member of society. He was a “ Pharisee” 
The Pharisees were a highly respected class of so¬ 
ciety. They deserved to be. Everybody respected 
them. They were the one class of society that was 
held in highest esteem. They occupied a higher place 
in public esteem in Jerusalem than the members of 
any of our present civic organizations for moral and 
political uplift, occupy in public esteem to-day; and 
perhaps with better reason. When the ordinary citi¬ 
zen saw a Pharisee going down the street he would 
say to his son, “ There goes Mr. Simon Dikaios, he 
is a Pharisee, a very fine man, v/ery upright, very 
pure, and thrifty withal. I hope, my son, that when 
you grow up you will be like him.” 

Now it is a fine thing to be highly respected. It 
is an exceedingly pleasant thing to be well thought 
of and to be well spoken of; but it won’t save any¬ 
body, it won’t keep anybody out of hell. It did not 
save this man. He is in hell now. 

A good many men think God must think well of 
them because men do. This is a great mistake; for 
Jesus Christ Himself tells us, “ God knoweth your 
hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men 
is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 
16:15.) You see God does not see as men see, for 
men look merely upon the outward appearance, but 
God looks upon the heart. I once heard a distin¬ 
guished liberal preacher in Chicago say, when he was 
preaching a funeral sermon over a man who was 
an upright man, but was not a Christian, and the 


A GOOD MAN AND A BAD MAN 27 


brilliant, liberal preacher wished to make it clear that 
this man had gone to Heaven; I say I heard this 
liberal preacher, under these circumstances, say, 
“ Any world will welcome a good citizen,” the in¬ 
tended implication being that Heaven would welcome 
this man because he was a good citizen, though he 
was not a Christian man. I am afraid this liberal 
preacher was not well posted about the heavenly 
world and the conditions upon which one is welcome 
there. There are a good many citizens of Los An¬ 
geles, highly respected gentlemen like our friend the 
Pharisee of the text, who do not stand the slightest 
chance of spending eternity in Heaven unless they 
do something that they have never done yet. 

4. Look at the Pharisee again, This man saw 
no Haws in himself, hut was the best man in the 
world in his ozvn estimation. Speaking to God he 
said, “ I thank thee, that I am not as other men are.” 
(Luke 18: 11.) Literally translated, what he said 
was, “ I thank Thee, that I am not as the rest of 
men ” He divided society into two classes. He was 
in one class all alone, and all “ the rest of men ” 
were in the other class. He was good and all the 
rest of men were bad; and there he stands exclaim¬ 
ing, “ I thank thee, that I am not as the rest of men.” 
He had a mighty high opinion of himself, but he 
went to hell just the same. 

How many men there are who are building their 
hopes of Heaven upon their inability to discover any 
flaws in themselves. “ I do not see what I need of 
Christ,” many are saying, “ I see no great sins in 
myself. Jesus Christ may do for the drunkard, the 
harlot, the thief and the murderer, but what do I 


.28 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


need of Him?” Well, let me tell you what need 
you have of Jesus Christ, you need Him to save you 
from being everlastingly damned. That is all, but 
that is enough, isn’t it? You talk quite like this 
Pharisee, who, our Lord Jesus tells us, went down 
to his house unjustified, was lost and is now in 
hell. 

5. Again, This Pharisee was a religions man. 
Every Pharisee was very religious, and this par¬ 
ticular Pharisee was especially so. All Pharisees 
were much given to reading the Bible and other 
pious books. They were much given to prayer and 
religious ceremonies. This particular Pharisee could 
tell the Lord how often he fasted every week; he 
fasted twice every week. He fasted far more fre¬ 
quently than the law required of him. He was also 
perfectly orthodox. The Pharisaical party was the 
orthodox party. The Sadducees were the heretics. 
Now, religious ceremonies are good. Praying is 
good. Fasting is good. Orthodoxy is very good. 
But all of these put together won’t save anyone, they 
won’t keep anyone out of Hell. No, in all this 
world’s history they have never saved one single 
soul. 

There are many depending upon these things as 
the foundation of their hope of Heaven. “ Oh, I 
am quite sure I will go to Heaven,” many are say¬ 
ing, “For I pray every morning and every night, 
I read the Bible every day, I go to church every 
Sunday, I fast on Fridays and through Lent. I par¬ 
take of the Sacrament very often, I am orthodox 
in my creed, very orthodox. I believe in the Verbal 
Inspiration of the Bible and in the Virgin Birth of 


A GOOD MAN AND A BAD MAN 29 


our Lord, and in the Real Deity of the Lord Jesus, 
and in the literal Bodily Resurrection, and in the 
Atonement by the Shed Blood of Jesus Christ, and 
in the Premillennial Coming of Christ, I believe in 
endless punishment. Oh, I am safe.” Fine, very 
fine; but listen: All this you have mentioned does 
not prove that you are saved, that you are headed 
for Heaven. Religion is a good thing, a very good 
thing, but there will doubtless be very many men and 
women in hell who were very religious when on 
earth, and very orthodox, too. 

6 . But we have not gotten to the end of the ex¬ 
cellencies of this Pharisee even yet, this Pharisee 
was a generous man. He could tell God he gave a 
tenth of all he made. It is a good thing to be able 
to say that. I wonder how many in this audience 
to-night could say, “ I give a tenth of all I get.” I 
wish more of you could. I wish it for your own 
sakes. I wish it for the sake of the poor. I wish 
it for Jesus Christ’s sake. It is a good thing to be 
generous. It is a good thing to give away one dol¬ 
lar in every ten dollars you make, ten dollars in 
every hundred dollars, ten thousand dollars in every 
hundred thousand you make. Yes, it is a good 
thing, a mighty fine thing, but it won’t save you. 
It won’t take you to Heaven. This Pharisee did 
it and he was lost after all. He went to hell as 
straight as many who never gave a penny. 

Do you not think that this Pharisee was a pretty 
good man, as men go? Was he not in many im¬ 
portant respects a most exemplary man? But he 
was lost! Jesus Christ distinctly tells us he went 
down to his house unjustified, an unforgiven sinner, 


30 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


tinder the wrath of God. He went to hell! Why? 
For precisely the same reason that many of you here 
to-night are lost and on the road to hell. 

1. First of all, He went to hell because he trusted 
in himself. In verse nine we read that Jesus spoke 
this parable, “ Unto certain who trusted in them¬ 
selves that they were righteous.” This man counted 
up his virtues, his clean life, his honesty in business, 
the high esteem in which he was held in the com¬ 
munity, his own high estimation of himself, his 
religiousness, his generosity in giving, and he put his 
trust in these good qualities of his own. And any 
man who puts his trust in his ozvn virtues and good¬ 
ness, and many righteous acts, or in himself in any 
way, unll be lost; he will spend eternity in hell, no 
matter how good he is. 

2. In the second place, This man went to hell be¬ 

cause he despised others. We read in verse nine that 
Jesus spoke “ This parable unto certain who trusted 
in themselves that they were righteous, and despised 
others.” He thanked God he was “ not as the rest 
of men,” or “ even as this publican,” who stood near 
him praying. There are many like this man. There 
are many here to-night. You despise the drunkard. 
You despise the rum seller, you despise the bootleg¬ 
ger, you despise the harlot, you despise the criminal. 
You think that you are essentially different from all 
these; but God has plainly said in His Own Word, 
“ There is no difference: for all have sinned, and 
come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:22, 23). 
And God also says in I John 1:8, 10, “If we say 
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the 
truth is not in us. . . . If we say that we have 


A GOOD MAN AND A BAD MAN 31 


not sinned, we make God a liar, and His Word is 
not in us.” You will be lost unless you get over this 
trusting in yourselves and despising others. 

3. In the third place, and principally, This man 
went to hell because he did not acknowledge him¬ 
self to be a sinner. There is not one word or hint 
of confession of sin in all his prayer. There is no 
pardon of sin possible without confession that we are 
sinners. No man who will not definitely confess 
himself to be a sinner will ever enter Heaven. God 
tells us this over and over again in both the Old 
Testament and the New Testament, for example, He 
says in Prov. 28:13, “ He that covereth his sins 
shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsak- 
eth them■ shall obtain mercy.” If you will not take 
the sinner’s place before God and confess yourself 
a sinner, there is no possibility of your escaping 
hell. 

4. In the fourth place, This man went to hell be¬ 
cause he did not cry to God for mercy. He told 
God how good he was. He considered himself as 
a saint richly deserving God’s admiration, not as a 
sinner sorely needing God’s mercy and pardon. 
There are a good many like him. There are a good 
many men in Los Angeles who might have sat for 
this picture of “ the Man who Went to Hell ” which 
our Lord Jesus has drawn in our text; and all such 
persons are lost. Every man is a sinner needing 
pardon, and no matter how good a man may be, or 
may fancy he is, he will never be saved, he will never 
get God’s favour, he will never be pardoned, he will 
not escape an everlasting hell until he gets down be¬ 
fore God and honestly cries to God for mercy. 


32 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


It was a very simple way in which this good man 
was lost, just by not taking his right place before 
God as a sinner, and crying to God for mercy, and 
that is the way many of the best men and women 
in this house are being lost to-night. Wake up! 
Wake up, before it is too late! Wake up now, to 
the fact that you are a sinner, or you will wake up 
some day in hell! Cry to God to-night for mercy 
and for forgiveness of your many sins, or you will 
cry some day for a drop of water to cool your swollen 
tongue when you are in anguish in the flames 
of hell. 

II. The Bad Man Who Went to Heaven 

Now, let us look for a few minutes at the Bad 
Man who was saved, the Bad Man who is now in 
Heaven. 

i. In the first place, he was an immoral man. 
There can be no doubt that he was an immoral man. 
The business he was in necessitated his being im¬ 
moral. A man could not be honest in the business 
in which this man was engaged. He was a petty 
tax gatherer. The Roman Government farmed out 
the taxes of a Province as a whole, and the collector 
for the Province had to get his money back as best 
he could, by whatever means he could, and in addi¬ 
tion had to get a profit for himself. He farmed out 
his province in sections and the collector of taxes 
of each section had to get his rake-off. This man 
in turn farmed out his section to the petty tax gath¬ 
erers, the publicans , and they had to get their rake- 
off. Extortion and crookedness of all kinds were 
necessary to make the business of a publican pay. A 


A GOOD MAN AND A BAD MAN 33 


man could not be honest in that business, and he was 
necessarily an outcast from good society, and was 
classed with sinners. “ Publicans and sinners,” was 
the phrase constantly used concerning publicans. 

2. In the second place. This man was looked 
down upon by his fellow-men. While the Pharisee 
was the man who was universally held in highest 
esteem, the publican was the man who was univer¬ 
sally held in utter contempt. Listen, the fact that 
you belong to a class everyone despises is no proof 
whatever that you can never enter Heaven. 

3. In the third place, This man saw many faults 
in himself. In his own eyes he was the chief of sin¬ 
ners. While the Pharisee thought himself the best 
man in the world, the publican thought himself the 
worst. While the Pharisee thanked God he was 
“ not as the rest of men,” the publican regarded him¬ 
self as “The sinner” (Luke 18:13 R- V. margin), 
the one preeminent sinner. 

The fact that a man sees himself as a great sinner, 
even the greatest of sinners, is no reason for his 
thinking he cannot get to Heaven. Paul said, “ This 
is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, 
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sin¬ 
ners ; of whom I am chief.” Yet Paul is in Heaven 
to-day. When they cut off his head in Rome, his 
spirit departed to be with Christ in Glory. (Phil. 
1: 23.) There will be a great company of men and 
women in Heaven who, when here on earth, saw 
themselves as the chief of sinners. 

4. In the fourth place, “ This publican who went 
to Heaven had not been a religious man.” The pub¬ 
licans were an irreligious, careless, godless lot. We 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


.34 

see him in this picture becoming religious, going 
“ up into the temple to pray,” but it was something 
new. He had been disdainful of the religion of his 
fathers or he would never have been in the business 
he was in. Only the man who put the getting of 
money before the religion of his fathers would con¬ 
sent to be a publican. 

How often we look at the careless, irreligious 
crowd, the men and women who seldom or never go 
to church, who seldom or never pray, who never 
read the Bible, who have never been baptized and 
joined the church, and think, “ there is no hope for 
that crowd.” Oh, yes, there is. This once utterly 
irreligious publican is now in Heaven. There are 
hosts of men and women in Los Angeles to-night 
who never darken church doors, who will some day 
turn around and get to Heaven, if you and I do our 
duty. I have gone to a lumber town in Wisconsin 
where there was not a single church, but where there 
were twenty-two saloons, and have spoken on the 
streets and in an old saloon, and have seen a lot of 
these hard, old, irreligious toughs saved, and the 
former keeper of that very saloon was saved. I 
have seen a tough old sporting man, whose mother 
before him ran a sporting house in Omaha, and he 
had never been in a Protestant church before in his 
life, and he started on that very day to spend the 
afternoon and night gambling, brought into our 
church in Chicago and saved before he got out. I 
have had a man call me out of this pulpit to speak 
to me under that gallery yonder, a man who had 
been a gambler and crook all his life, and now he 
wanted to take Christ and could not wait until I had 


A GOOD MAN AND A BAD MAN 35 


preached my sermon. The irreligious gang are often 
more hopeful material to work on than the religious 
gang, and a man may be as bad a heretic as this pub¬ 
lican probably was; yes, he may have been a rank, 
rampant, raging infidel or agnostic up to the present 
moment, and then get saved and start for Heaven 
and Eternal Glory before this meeting is over. 

I have seen a man who was a rank and bitter in¬ 
fidel, who had not been inside a church for twelve 
years, come into our building and be beautifully 
saved before he got out, and that man was preach¬ 
ing the Gospel within a year. 

One of the brightest converts we had in Kansas 
City while I preached there a short time ago was a 
very intelligent university man who the first time he 
came to hear me was an utter agnostic. 

I once saw a man who was ninety-two years old 
and who had not been inside a church for eighty 
years, come into a meeting like this, where I was 
preaching, and go out a saved man. 

5. In the fifth place, This man who is now in 
Heaven , was a miserable old skinflint. Money was 
his god. He got all he could by hook or by crook, 
and kept all he got. I admit that a man held in 
the power of the love of gold, is almost the hardest 
man there is to save, far harder than a drunkard, a 
gambler or a harlot; but it can be done. 

This bad man who Jesus Christ tells us went to 
his house justified, and so beyond a doubt got to 
Heaven and is there now, was certainly a tough cus¬ 
tomer ; but he was saved. What did he do that 
brought him salvation in spite of all that was against 
him? 


36 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


1. First of all, He took his right place before 
God, he took his place as a sinner. That is what 
anyone must do and everyone must do in order to 
be saved. God's Word is as plain as day about that. 
God says in a passage already quoted, I Jno. 1:8, 9, 
“ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive our¬ 
selves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our 
sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, 
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 

There is not a man or woman on earth who will 
ever get to Heaven unless they own up to what God 
says in this Book, namely, that “ we have all sinned 
and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23), 
and get right down before God and confess that they 
are poor, miserable, vile, worthless, hell-deserving 
sinners. Jesus Christ can save sinners, even the 
worst, but He cannot save anyone but sinners, and 
sinners who confess fully and frankly that they are 
sinners. Some of you here to-night will spend eter¬ 
nity in hell for that very reason, just because you 
won’t own up that you are sinners. You know you 
are, but you won’t admit it, you seek to conceal it, 
or excuse it or palliate it, and before you get through 
you have tried to make out that you are a pretty good 
sort after all. Listen! You are bound straight for 
hell. You are taking the shortest and swiftest cut 
to that awful place. 

2. In the second place, This man asked for mercy. 
He saw there was only one hope for him and that 
was in the unmerited favour of God. Any man can 
be saved by grace. No one can be saved in any 
other way. 

3. In the third place, This man recognized that 


A GOOD MAN AND A BAD MAN 37 


there was no mercy to he had except on the ground 
of shed blood. That comes out in the literal transla¬ 
tion of the word translated, “ be merciful.” Literally 
translated, it means, “ be propitiated.” Listen, 
friends, very carefully right now: There is no 
salvation or pardon to be had by anybody except on 
the ground of the shed blood, the atoning blood of 
Jesus Christ. Listen to what God says, “ Without 
shedding of blood there is no remission ” (Heb. 
9:22). Listen again, “All have sinned and come 
short of the glory of God; being justified freely by 
his grace through the redemption that is in Christ 
Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, 
through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness 
because of the passing over of the sins done afore¬ 
time, in the forbearance of God” (Rom. 3:23-25). 
Listen again, “ Christ redeemed us from the curse of 
the law, having become a curse for us: for it is writ¬ 
ten, Cursed is everyone that hangeth upon a tree ” 
(Gal. 3: 13). There is pardon, complete pardon, for 
the vilest sinner that ever walked this earth, on the 
ground of the shed blood of Jesus Christ: there is 
no pardon for anyone on earth in any other way. 
I was vile enough, God knows, so vile as God and 
I alone know, but my sins are all forgiven. They 
are all blotted out. Thank God, I know that. If I 
should die to-night I would be in Heaven before you 
were sure I was dead, but it is only on the ground 
of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Nobody will ever 
get to Heaven on any other ground. Our Lord Jesus 
Himself says, in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the 
truth, and the life. No one cometh unto the Father 
but by me.” The Unitarian denies the atoning blood 


38 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


and he will not and cannot get to Heaven until he 
changes his position on that matter. The Christian 
Scientist denies the atoning blood, and not a Chris¬ 
tian Scientist can get to Heaven until he gives up 
that damning error. It is true, many call themselves 
Christian Scientists who are not really so, and they 
do not realize that Mrs. Eddy denied and sneered at 
the atoning blood, but she did, and a real “ Christian 
Scientist ” cannot get to Heaven until he recognizes 
his error at that point. Many of our professedly 
orthodox people in these days deny the atoning 
blood, and not one of them will get to Heaven until 
they give up that damning error. There is a way to 
Heaven open to the vilest sinner that ever walked 
this earth, if he will simply recognize the fact he is 
a sinner and accept God’s testimony about Jesus 
Christ and His atoning blood, and trust God to for¬ 
give him on the ground of the shed blood of Jesus 
Christ. Not one man or woman on earth can be 
saved in any other way. 

There are a great number of you here to-night 
who are trusting in the very same things that landed 
the Pharisee of our text in hell, and unless you stop 
trusting in these things you will soon land there 
too. You are neglecting to do what the Pharisee 
neglected to do, and you will wind up where he has 
already wound up, unless you change your tactics 
pretty quickly. But listen! The Door of Heaven 
stands open to-night to anyone here who will do 
what the publican did, 

First. Take your place as a sinner before God. 

Second. Cry to God for mercy. 

Third. Recognize that there is no mercy to be 


A GOOD MAN AND A BAD MAN 39 

had except on the ground of the shed blood of Jesus 
Christ. 

Fourth. Believe to-night God’s testimony about 
that blood; that by the shedding of Christ’s blood, 
your sins were all atoned for, and trust God to for¬ 
give you and save you to-night, because Jesus Christ 
died in your place. Do that, and you are sure to get 
to Heaven. Who will do it right now? 

Every one in this audience to-night will leave this 
building “ justified ” or unjustified, on the direct road 
to Heaven or on the direct road to hell. It depends 
entirely upon whether you do what the Pharisee, the 
good man who went to hell, did, or what the pub¬ 
lican, the bad man who went to Heaven, did. It is 
for each one of you to decide for yourself which you 
will do. How will you decide? 


Ill 


A WONDERFUL CONTRAST: “ UNDER THE 
CURSE OF GOD ” OR “ A CHILD OF 
GOD.” WHICH ARE YOU? 

“For as many as are of the works of the lazv are 
under a curse: for it is written, Cursed is everyone 
who continueth not in all things that are written in 
the Book of the Law, to do them .”— Galatians 
3:10, R. V. 


UT as many as received him, to them gave 
he the right to become the children of God, 
even to them that believe on his name ”— 
John i : 12. 

What a sermon these two passages preach when 
thus placed side by side? They need little comment. 
They tell their own story and ought to produce their 
own effect. 


* 

I. All Who Are of the Works of the Law, 
Under the Curse of God 

Let us look first at the dark side of the contrast, 
Gal. 3:10, “For as many as are of the works of 
the lazv are under a curse: for it is written, Cursed 
is everyone who continueth not in all things that are 
written in the Book of the Law, to do them.” Every 
man who is “ Of the works of the law,” rests under 
a curse. 


40 


A WONDERFUL CONTRAST 


41 


I. Here a question of vital importance arises. 
What Is Meant by Being of the Works of the Law? 
The context in which the words are found answers 
the question clearly and definitely. To be “ of works 
of the law ” is to be seeking the favour of God and 
consequent salvation, life and blessing by keeping the 
law of God; to be seeking salvation, life and blessing 
by our own good deeds; to be seeking the favour of 
God by our own righteousness; to be seeking “ salva¬ 
tion by character ”; it is to be seeking salvation as 
something due us because of our own righteous 
works, instead of seeking it as a “ free gift of God ” 
by the “ grace ” of God, the unmerited favour of 
God. Those who are “ of the works of the law ” 
are all those who are seeking the favour of God and 
His blessing and His salvation by their own good 
deeds, by their own righteousness, by their own 
character; and as many as are doing this are under 
a curse. “ Everyone ” who is doing this, every man 
and woman here to-night who is seeking “ salvation 
by character,” seeking salvation on the ground of 
anything that you yourself are or do, is “ under a 
curse.” So God Himself declares, and therefore we 
may be sure it is true, in spite of all the reasonings 
and philosophizings of men, even though those men 
are leaders of thought in this “ Wonderful Twentieth 
Century ”: wonderful in the self-satisfied conceit of 
its “ Scientists ” and “ Philosophers ” and essayists 
and novelists, if in nothing else. Listen again to 
God’s Own Words: “As many as are of the works 
of the law are under a curse: for it is written, 
Cursed is everyone who continueth not in all things 


,42 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


that are written in the Book of the Law, to do 
them” (Gal. 3:10, R. V.). 

2. But, Why are Those Who are “ Of Works 
of Law ” " Under a Curse ”? It is perfectly proper 
for us to ask that question, and God has been 
pleased to answer it even before we ask it. It is 
answered right here in our text, “ As many as are 
the works of the law, are under a curse: for it is 
written, Cursed is everyone who continueth not in 
all things that are written in the Book of the Law 
to do them ” The reason why those who are “ Of 
works of law are under a curse ” is because the law , 
in order to get its blessing and the blessing of the 
Author of the law , that is God , demands absolutely 
perfect obedience. The law says, “ Keep me per¬ 
fectly and you shall be blessed, keep me perfectly 
and you shall live; but break me at any point and 
you shall die. He that doeth these things shall live 
by them, but cursed is everyone who continueth not 
in all things that are written in the Book of the Law 
to do them,” and there is only one member of the 
human race who has ever perfectly kept the law of 
God, and that Person is Jesus Christ. So no man 
but Jesus Christ can find life by his own doing, no 
man but Jesus Christ can be “ saved by character.” 
To talk about anyone but Jesus Christ being saved 
by character is to talk the sheerist nonsense. If any 
of us should keep the Law of God perfectly, abso¬ 
lutely perfectly, from the hour of our birth to the 
hour of our death, we would thereby obtain the 
favour of God and win Eternal Life by our own 
doing, by our own character, but not one of us has 


A WONDERFUL CONTRAST 


43 


ever done it. No human being but Jesus Christ has 
ever done it. 

The moment any man, woman or child breaks the 
Law of God at any smallest point, that moment 
" Salvation by character,” salvation by our own 
doing, becomes an absolute impossibility. And every 
man, woman and child has already broken the Law 
of God at some point, and therefore if we are seek¬ 
ing God’s favour by our own good deeds, by our 
own righteousness, by our own character, we are 
“ Under a curse.” No man here to-night can stand 
up and say, “ I have kept the Law of God per¬ 
fectly. I never broke God’s law at any point.” 
There is not a man or woman here to-night but has 
not only broken God’s law but broken the first and 
greatest commandment of God at some time. What 
is the first and greatest commandment of God’s 
law? Listen to our Lord Jesus’ own answer to that 
question, Matt. 22:37, 38, “And Jesus said unto 
him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 
This is the first and great commandment.” 

Who here to-night can say, “ I have always kept 
that commandment, I have always put God first in 
everything, I have always put God first in business, 
I have always put God first in politics, I have always 
put God first in home life, I have always put God 
first in social life, I have always put God first in 
pleasure, I have always put God first in study, I have 
always put God first in everything ” ? Who can say 
it? Be honest now, be honest with yourself, be 
honest with God. You know you cannot say it. 
Every one of us has broken this great and first com- 


44 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


mandment. There is, then, no hope for anyone of 
us on the ground of “ the law,” no hope for anyone 
of us on the ground of our doing, no hope for any¬ 
one of us on the ground of our own character or 
morality or merit. “As many as are of the works 
of the law are under a curse: for it is written. 
Cursed is everyone who continueth not in all things 
that are written in the Book of the Law, to do 
them.” If we cannot get out of the sphere of the 
law into some other sphere, into the sphere of Grace, 
we are doomed, and will ultimately be damned. 

How utterly foolish, then, is the man who expects 
to be saved by the law, by his own good deeds, and 
win Eternal Life by his own good character or by 
his own good deeds. “ For as many as are of the 
works of the law are under a curse: for it is written, 
Cursed is everyone who continueth not in all things 
that are written in the Book of the Law, to do 
them.” 

Every man here to-night who is counting on his 
own good deeds, on his own morality, on his own 
good character, to recommend him to God’s favour, 
is “ Under a curse.” 

II. All Who Receive Jesus Christ, Children 

of God 

Now let us turn to the other side, the bright side 
of the contrast, Jno. 1:12: “But as many as re¬ 
ceived him, to them gave he the right to become the 
children of God, even to them that believe on his 
name.” The first side of the contrast is very dark, 
dark as midnight, pitch dark, but the other side of 
the contrast is very bright, bright as the full noon- 


A WONDERFUL CONTRAST 


45 


time sunlight of the eternal day. While “every 
man who is of works of law,” every man who is de¬ 
pending upon his own deeds and his own goodness 
for salvation, every man out of Christ, is “ Under a 
curse ”; on the other hand, every man who has 
thrown away all confidence in himself and his own 
doing and his own character, and who has accepted 
Jesus Christ, is given the “ power to become a child 
of God.” The word translated, “ power ” in the 
authorized version of this verse (Jno. i: 12) means 
more than the sense that we usually give to the word 
“ power.” It means the “ authority ” or the “ right.” 
The one who receives Jesus Christ, the Incarnate 
Word of God, has not merely the ability to become 
a child of God, but he has the God-given authority 
to become a child of God. It is the Divinely be¬ 
stowed prerogative of everyone who receives Christ 
Jesus, to call himself a “ Child of God.” As John 
puts it in his first epistle, I Jno. 3:1: “Behold, 
what manner of love the father hath bestowed upon 
us (that is upon believers in Jesus Christ, those who 
have received Jesus Christ), that we should be called 
the children of God; and such we are.” 

There is just one condition of attaining to this 
immeasurably exalted authority prerogative and 
honour of becoming a “ Child of God ” and that is 
receiving Jesus Christ. Whosoever, anybody and 
everybody who, receives Jesus Christ the Son of 
God, instantly becomes himself a child of God. It 
matters not what his past history may have been, 
he may have been a very bad man or he may have 
been a very good man, he may have been a very re¬ 
ligious man or he may have been an utterly godless 


46 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


and profane man, he may have been very orthodox, 
an intelligent believer in all the great fundamental 
doctrines of our faith, or he may have been an utter 
heretic or rank infidel, but the moment he receives 
Jesus Christ, he instantly receives authority to be¬ 
come a child of God. “ But as many as received 
him, to them gave he the right to become the chil¬ 
dren of God, even to them that believe on his name ” 
(Jno. 1:12). Any man or woman in this audience 
to-night can get the God-given “ right ” to become 
a child of God in an instant. All you have to do is 
to receive Jesus Christ. 

2. What does it mean to “ receive ” Jesus 
Christ? We need to be very clear and very sure 
about this. The Greek word translated, “ receive ” 
means simply “ to take ” or “ to take to oneself,” to 
receive (or, accept) what is offered. So, then, to 
receive Jesus Christ means to take Jesus Christ to 
ourselves, to take Him to be to ourselves all that He 
came into this world to be to us. 

What did Jesus Christ come into this world 
to be to anyone who would take Him? The 
Bible answers that question with great plainness and 
great definiteness. 

1. First of all, Jesus Christ came into this world 
to be our Sin-Bearer, the One who bore our sins in 
our place, so that we would not have to bear them 
ourselves; and to pay the penalty of our sins. We 
read in the twenty-ninth verse of this same chapter 
from which our text is taken, “ Behold, the lamb of 
God that taketh away the sin of the world!” 

So then, to receive Jesus Christ means to take 
Jesus Christ to he our Sin-Bearer, the One who paid 


A WONDERFUL CONTRAST 


47 


the penalty of our sins for us, or as Paul puts it in 
the thirteenth verse of the chapter from which our 
other text was taken, Gal. 3:13: the One who “ Re¬ 
deemed us from the curse of the law (that we were 
under, because we had broken it) by becoming a 
curse for us (that is, in our place) ; for it is written, 
Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” 

2. In the second place, Jesus Christ came to be 

our Deliverer, not merely from the guilt of sin, but 
from the power of sin. We read in the eighth chap¬ 
ter of the same book from which our text is taken, 
Jno. 8:34, 36: “ Jesus answered them, Verily, 

verily, I say unto you, whosoever committeth sin is 
the servant of sin. ... If therefore the Son shall 
make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” 

So then, to receive Jesus Christ means to take 
Him to ourselves to be our Deliverer from the pozver 
of sin, to give up all our self-efforts to deliver our¬ 
selves from the power of sin, and just look up to 
the Risen Christ, Who has “all pozver in Heaven 
and on earth,” to deliver us from the power of sin. 

3. In the third place, He came to be our Divine 
Teacher and Absolute Lord, Who has a right to the 
absolute control of all our thoughts and desires and 
purposes and actions. In the thirteenth chapter of 
this same book, verse 13, our Lord Jesus is recorded 
as saying, “Ye call me, teacher, and Lord, and ye 
say well; for so I am.” Even in the Revised Ver¬ 
sion we have not in this passage an accurate trans¬ 
lation of the Greek. What Jesus really said was, 
“Ye call me the teacher, and the Lord: and ye 
say well; for so I am.” 

So then, To “receive Him” means then, to take 


48 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


Him to ourselves as "the Teacher,” the One and 
Only absolutely authoritative Teacher, the One 
Whom we shall believe against the whole world 
(if the whole world says one thing, every philoso¬ 
pher, scientist and university professor and sage and 
poet in it, and Jesus Christ says another, we shall 
believe Him against them all), and “ The Lord,” the 
One Who is our Divine, and Absolute Lord to 
Whom we hand over unquestioningly and unhesitat¬ 
ingly the absolute control of all our conduct in every 
relation of life, and to Whom we bow the knee and 
“ Confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of 
God, the father” (Phil. 2:10, 11). 

When anyone thus receives Jesus Christ, takes 
Him to be to himself his Sin-Bearer, and trusts God 
to forgive him because Jesus Christ made a full 
atonement for his sin by dying in his place, and to 
be to himself his Deliverer from the power of sin, 
giving up all his self-efforts to overcome sin, and 
trusting the risen Christ Jesus alone to give him vic¬ 
tory over sin, and to be his inerrantly authoritative 
Teacher, Whom he will believe against the world, 
and to be “ The Lord” (not “A Lord,” but “The 
Lord ”) to Whom he unquestioningly and unhesi¬ 
tatingly surrenders the absolute control of all his con¬ 
duct in every relation of life, and to Whom he will 
bow the knee, "confessing that Jesus Christ is 
Lord” (cf. Rom. 10:9, 10), the moment that any¬ 
one does this, that moment that person gets the 
right, the authority, the authority which God Him¬ 
self bestowed upon him, to call himself " God's 
child ! ” Anyone here to-night who will, can thus 
become God’s child, and become so at once. 


A WONDERFUL CONTRAST 


49 


We do not become children of God by praying 
or by reading the Bible, or by turning over a new 
leaf, or by quitting our sins, or by doing good deeds, 
or by leading holy lives, as good as all these things 
are in their place, we become children of God by 
the one simple act of receiving Jesus Christ, of tak¬ 
ing Him to be to ourselves what He came into the 
world to be. “ As many as received him, to them 
gave He the right to become the children of God, 
even to them that believe on his name.” 

Even if we have never been to church before in 
our lives, even if we have never read a verse in the 
Bible in our lives, even if we have never said a 
prayer in our lives, even if we have never done one 
single good deed in all our lives, even though our 
lives have been full of sin and vileness every day of 
our lives, the moment we thus receive Jesus Christ 
we get the right, the authority, the authority given 
to us by God Himself, to become “ children of 
God.” 

If, on the other hand, we go to church several 
times a week, if we read the Bible every day, if we 
pray every morning, noon and night, if we give up 
our every bad habit, even if we give much to the 
poor, even if we do all sorts of good deeds, and 
avoid all sorts of sins, if we do all these, and do 
not receive Jesus Christ as our Sin-Bearer, as our 
Deliverer from the power of sin, as our Authorita¬ 
tive and Final Teacher, and as our Divine Lord, we 
are not and cannot become “ children of God.” The 
right to sonship is in Jesus Christ, and you only get 
the right by receiving Him. If I put $1,000 in a 
certain package and then say to you, “ Here, if you 


50 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


take that package you can have what is in it,” if you 
took the package you would get that $1,000, but if 
you did not take the package you would not get that 
$1,000, no matter how many other great and good 
things you might do. Now, God has put the right 
to sonship in a package and that package is a per¬ 
son, Jesus Christ. If you take Him you get it; if 
you refuse Him you cannot get it, no matter how 
many other good things you may do. 

God makes this very plain in another place, I Jno. 
5:10-12. Here He says: “He that believeth on 
the Son of God hath the testimony in Him: he that 
believeth not God hath made him a liar because he 
hath not believed in the testimony that God hath 
borne concerning his Son. And the testimony is this, 
that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in 
his Son. He that hath the Son, hath the life; and. 
he that hath not the Son of God, hath not the life.” 

Look squarely, seriously and intently at the con¬ 
trast, “As many as are of the deeds of the law,” as 
many as are trusting in their own doing and not in 
Jesus Christ, as many as are out of Christ, as many 
as have not definitely “received” Jesus Christ, good 
and bad alike, are “ under a curse ”; but on the other 
hand as many as receive Christ, regardless of the 
past, the vilest as well as the best, get the authority 
to become children of God. To which class do you 
belong to-night? I do not ask you whether you 
have been good or bad, moral or immoral, religious 
or godless, orthodox or heretical, but are you trying 
to get to Heaven by your own doing, or by trusting 
in what Another, Jesus Christ, has already done, are 
you “ of the works of the law,” or are you of those 


A WONDERFUL CONTRAST 


51 ' 


who have received Christ and put their trust in Him, 
and Him alone? If you are of the former, God’s 
Word for it, you are, “ Under a curse.” If you 
are of the latter, God’s Word for it, no matter what 
the past has been, you are a child of God to-night. 

“ Under a Curse ! ” What an appalling phrase! 
How those words make a thoughtful man shudder. 
“ Under a Curse!” What curse? Whose curse? 
The curse of the Law of God, which you have 
broken, and the curse of the God whose law you 
have broken, under the curse of the Infinite, Omnip¬ 
otent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Eternal, Infinitely 
Holy God, Who made all the great worlds that go 
to make up our universe, Who upholdeth and abso¬ 
lutely controlleth that universe and all things in it, 
Who holds the destinies of all individual men and 
all nations, the destinies of time and the destinies of 
eternity in His hand, under the curse of “ the God 
in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy 
ways” (Dan. 5:23). “Under the curse of God!” 
It is awful. It is appalling. It suggests that solemn 
and terrifying word spoken by Jesus Christ Himself, 
in Matt. 25 :41: “ Then shall he say also unto them 
on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into 
the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and 
his angels.” 

Now turn to the other side of the contrast, “Au¬ 
thority (the divinely given right) to become children 
of God.” How those “ God-breathed ” words make 
the intelligent heart bound and throb, “ The author¬ 
ity to become children of God.” Whose children? 
“ Children of God.” Ah! What would it be for a 
ragged, starving street urchin to become a child of 


.52 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


a king? But that is nothing, nothing at all, in com¬ 
parison with this, for you and me, moral derelicts 
such as we have been, “ sinners, poor and needy, 
weak and wounded, sick and sore,” to “ become 
children of God ”; not slaves, mind you; not servants, 
mind you; not retainers, mind you; not representa¬ 
tives, mind you; but children, "children of 
God.” I thought it quite fine once, when Mrs. Tor- 
rey and I had the privilege of sitting at table three 
times a day for a week or two, right beside the son 
of one of Europe’s reigning monarchs, the Prince, 
and his wife, the Princess; but to be a " Child of 
God!” Think of it! We cannot take it in,—but I 
know that I am a “ Child of God.” Do you know 
that you are a “Child of God?” You may become 
one and you may know it, inside of five minutes. 
Listen, “ But as many as receive him, to them gave 
he the right to become the children of God, even to 
them that believe on his name ” (Jno. i : 12). 

Can it be true? Yes, beyond all peradventure or 
question it is true, God Himself says it. And it is 
not only true, but it is open to you, open to any one 
of you, no matter how poor, ignorant and wicked 
you may be, open to you right now. 

Oh, men and women, and young men and maidens, 
step out right now from “ under the curse ” of God 
into the glory of becoming “ children of God.” 
What must you do? Only this, receive Jesus Christ, 
that is all. Take Him to be your Sin-Bearer and 
trust God to forgive you because Jesus Christ died 
in your place; take Him to be your Deliverer from 
the power of sin, and trust the Risen Christ, Who 
has “ all power in Heaven and on earth,” to keep 


A WONDERFUL CONTRAST 


53 


you day by day from sin’s power; take Him to be 
your Absolutely Authoritative Teacher and your Di¬ 
vine Lord, to Whom you surrender the entire con¬ 
trol of your life in all its relations, and to Whom 
you bow the knee and confess that He “ is Lord 
to the glory of God, the Father.” That is all. Will 
you do it? Will you do it right now? There is 
no greater folly that anyone can be guilty of than 
this, by our own free choice, to remain “ under the 
curse,” rather than to enter into the glory of becom¬ 
ing a “ Child of God,” by just receiving Jesus Christ. 
No inmate of any insane asylum ever did an insaner 
thing than that. Will you receive Jesus Christ and 
become a “ Child of God ” right now ? 


IV 


HOW A GOOD MAN, BUT AN UNSAVED 
MAN, BECAME A SAVED MAN AND 
A CHILD OF GOD 

“Send to Joppa and fetch Simon, whose surname 
is Peter; who shall speak unto thee words zvhereby 
thou shalt he saved, thou and all thy house .”— 
Acts 11:13, I 4 - 

I N the record of the incident from which my text 
is taken we are told that Cornelius, a captain 
in the Roman army, but who, as we shall see 
directly, was a remarkably good man in many ways, 
was not as yet a saved man. He was bidden to send 
to Joppa for Peter, the apostle; and Peter would 
speak unto him words through hearing which and 
believing which and acting upon which he would be 
saved. The life of Cornelius was already a most 
exemplary life in many respects and he was further¬ 
more a most candid, sincere, honest and earnest 
seeker after the truth. Nevertheless, our text clearly 
teaches us he was not saved as yet, although he was 
soon going to be saved. To my mind the story of 
the salvation of this man Cornelius is one of the 
most interesting and instructive contained in the 
whole Bible, not merely because he was the first 
Gentile convert to Christianity, but because of what 
he himself was. 


54 


A CHILD OF GOD 


55 


I. The Character of Cornelius 

Let us look closely at the character and conduct 
of this man Cornelius. 

i. In the first place, the inspired record declares 
that, He was “a Devout Man” (Acts 10:2), “and 
One That Feared God.” He was a man who lived 
as in the sight of God and with a reverential regard 
for God’s will and God’s law. It is evident from the 
whole story that his devotion was genuine; for it 
affected his whole household. We are told that not 
only did he fear God, but that he “ feared God with 
all his house.” Furthermore, the soldiers under him 
and his near friends also were affected by the gen¬ 
uineness of his pious regard for the Deity (Acts 
10:2, 7, 24). It certainly speaks well for a man’s 
piety when his whole family participate in it and 
when those who serve under him share in it. I 
know not a few religious people whose families do 
not take much stock in their religion and whose em¬ 
ployees do not take any stock at all in it; but so 
genuine was the regard for God of this man Cor¬ 
nelius, that his whole family shared in it and even 
his soldiers were affected by it. 

Cornelius was not in a position very favourable 
to the promotion of piety. Many have told me that 
it is impossible to be truly religious, even in our own 
army, but it was certainly very difficult in the old 
Roman army. But it was in this place of extreme 
difficulty that we see Cornelius maintaining his de¬ 
votion at a very high level. The truth is, there is 
no position in life where it is impossible to serve 
God. Someone (George C. Grubb) has said, “Have 
you never noticed that God’s most brilliant saints 


56 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


have been placed in positions of peculiar difficulty ? ” 
And he cites as illustrations of this the case of 
Joseph in the awful court of Pharaoh, and Daniel 
at the depraved court of Nebuchadnezzar. He might 
have added Elijah at the vile court of Ahab and 
John the Baptist at the licentious and bloody court 
of Herod, and many others. No, my friend, who¬ 
ever you may be who is making the excuse, “ I can¬ 
not serve God in my position ”; that is not true. If 
you cannot serve God in any other way in that posi¬ 
tion, you can serve Him by giving up your position. 

2. But Cornelius was not only a devout man 
tozvard God, he was also righteous toward men. 
This we are told in so many words in Acts 10:22. 
This was the testimony regarding him by those who 
went to Peter. I am sorry to say that devoutness 
toward God is not always accompanied by righteous¬ 
ness toward men. Of course, a faith in God and 
love for God that does not lead to honesty in deal¬ 
ing with men and love toward men is not an intelli¬ 
gent and genuine faith; but there is much of that 
sort of “ faith in God ” in the world to-day. There 
is much that passes for devotion that is not accom¬ 
panied by righteousness in private, domestic, busi¬ 
ness and political life. I have known men of most 
demonstrative piety who were utterly unreliable in 
business. Now I do not believe these men are all 
conscious hypocrites, but they certainly have a de¬ 
voutness which is of no value in the sight of God. 
But Cornelius was a man who was “ righteous ” 
toward men, as well as “ devout ” toward God. 
That is a most happy combination. I wish we had 
more men of that type here in Los Angeles. 


A CHILD OF GOD 


57 


3. In the third place, Cornelius was an excep¬ 
tionally and notably generous man. God’s own 
record concerning him is that he “ gave much alms 
to the people” (Acts 10:2). So notable was the 
generosity of Cornelius’ gifts to the poor that God 
took notice of them and kept a record of them. He 
even went so far as to send an angel down to say to 
Cornelius, “ Thine alms are gone up for a memorial 
before God” (Acts 10:4). That is to say that they 
had gone up to be remembered by God. If the only 
memorial that some of you professing Christians 
here to-night get in Heaven is your alms to the poor, 
I am afraid that it will be of such small dimensions 
that you will have a hard time finding it when you 
get there. All that a good many people give to the 
poor is their cast-off clothing, that they themselves 
would not wear any more anyhow. Not so with 
Cornelius, he “ gave much alms to the people.” 

4. But even this is not all, Cornelius was a Man 
of Prayer. We are told that he “prayed to God 
always” (Acts 10:2). Though he was not a Jew 
by birth, he had become convinced of the truth of 
the Jewish religion and observed the regular Jewish 
hours of prayer. We find him praying “ about the 
ninth hour of the day,” which was nine o’clock in 
the morning, the Jewish hour of morning sacrifice 
and morning prayer. And furthermore, as already 
said, we are told that he “prayed to God always.” 
He was a man who was constantly in prayer to God. 
He no longer worshipped or prayed to Jupiter or Juno 
or Venus or any of the false gods of the religion in 
which he was born and brought up, but to the only 


.58 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


true God. He was a man who was constantly in 
prayer to God. Remember, Cornelius was not yet 
a Christian; but what an example he sets in this 
matter of prayer to many who profess to believe ‘in 
Christ Jesus to-day. I wonder how much time the 
average Christian in this audience to-night, Protes¬ 
tant or Roman Catholic, spends in prayer daily. 
About the only time some Roman Catholics pray is 
when the priest appoints them so many Pater Nos- 
ters or Ave Marias as a penance, and about the only 
praying a good many Protestants do is four or five 
minutes at bedtime; but this captain in the Roman 
army, just emerging from the darkness of heathen¬ 
ism, was a man of constant prayer, and his prayers 
as well as his alms had “ gone up as a memorial be¬ 
fore God” (Acts 10:4). 

5. In addition to all these things, in the fifth 
place, Cornelius was an eager seeker after more 
light. When he heard that there was in another city 
a man who had more truth than he had, he “ im¬ 
mediately ” sent for him (Acts 10:7, 8, 33), and in 
addition to that “ called together his kinsmen and his 
near friends ” to hear this new truth. All the truth 
that there was he wanted for himself, and not only 
for himself but for his friends also, and he wished 
it at once. How unlike Cornelius was to many 
to-day who call themselves honest “ seekers after 
truth,” but who studiously avoid those who are likely 
to give them the truth, and, if they happen to meet 
them, dodge and quibble and resort to all sorts of 
subterfuges to escape from letting the light into their 
hearts. Many a man to-day calls himself a “ truth- 
seeker,” and goes and listens to some palpable petti- 


A CHILD OF GOD 


59 


fogger such as Colonel Ingersoll was. Cornelius was 
not that kind of “ truth-seeker ” but an honest and 
genuine one who really wanted to know the truth, 
and who was ready to immediately obey it when he 
found it. Cornelius wa9 not yet a Christian, but 
he was not of that type of non-Christians who are 
ready to listen to all sorts of disingenuous reason¬ 
ings and foolish imaginations that seem to discredit 
Christianity. He was indeed a sincere seeker after 
truth. 

At the very time that directions came to him from 
God to send to Joppa for Simon Peter, who would 
tell him the saving truth, he was in prayer for more 
light. That is evident from Acts 10:31, 32, where 
we read that the angel said to him, “ Cornelius, 
thy prayer is heard. . . . Send therefore to Joppa, 
and call unto thee Simon, whose surname is Peter/’ 
So it is evident that the “prayer” that he was offer¬ 
ing and that zvas “ heard ” was a prayer for light, a 
prayer for the truth. Every honest seeker after light 
will pray for it. I would like to ask any skeptic 
present here to-night, “ Have you ever honestly 
asked God to show you the light? Have you ever 
honestly asked God to show you if Jesus Christ was 
His Son or not, and promised Him that if He would 
show you that Jesus was the Son of God you would 
accept Him as your Saviour, and confess Him as 
such before the world ?” 

6 . In the sixth place, Cornelius was ready to 
obey the truth when he found it, whatever it might 
require of him. This is evident from his question 
when God’s messenger appeared. He was badly 
frightened, but he stood up like the obedient soldier 


.60 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


that he was, and said, “ What is it, Lord?” (Acts 
10:4). In other words, “Lord, give the command 
and I will obey it.” His readiness to obey the truth 
is also proven by his prompt obedience to the Gospel 
when it was declared to him (Acts 10:43-48). 

Taken all together, this man Cornelius was a man 
of singularly lofty character; devout toward God, 
righteous toward men, a great giver to the poor, a 
man of much prayer, an eager seeker after truth, 
ready to obey the truth when he found it, whatever 
it might require; and yet with all this, the inspired 
record tells us Cornelius was not as yet “ saved,” 
that he still needed salvation: the word that God 
spoke to him was, “ Send to Joppa and fetch Simon, 
whose surname is Peter; who shall speak unto thee 
words whereby thou shalt be saved” It is clear 
then that he was not saved as yet. 

How many there are in this audience to-night who 
are trusting for salvation in just such things as Cor¬ 
nelius already had, and who fancy they are saved 
because they have some or all of these things, though 
they certainly have them in much less measure than 
Cornelius had. How many men have told me they 
expected to be saved because they were religious or 
because they were righteous in their daily life in 
their dealings with men, or because they were gener¬ 
ous to the poor, or because they prayed a good deal, 
or because they were honest seekers after the truth. 
Behold Cornelius! He was all these and more, and 
yet God declares that he was not as yet saved. If 
any man could be “ saved by character ” certainly 
Cornelius could; but he was unsaved, and that fact 
shows the utter folly of this modern nonsensical 


A CHILD OF GOD 


61 


talk about “ Salvation by Character. ,, Cornelius still 
needed something that was absolutely necessary be¬ 
fore he could be a saved man. I am glad to tell you 
he found it. Every man who is as sincere a seeker 
after truth as Cornelius was, and as ready to obey 
it when he finds it, will certainly find it; for the Lord 
Jesus Himself says, “ If any man willeth to do his 
will (that is, God’s will) he shall know of the teach¬ 
ing whether it is of God, or whether I speak from 
myself” (Jno. 7: 17). It is absolutely certain that 
any man who sincerely desires to know the truth and 
is ready to obey it when he finds it, will find it, and 
will accept the truth as it is in Jesus and will thereby 
be saved; but he is not actually saved until he does 
know this truth and receives it and acts upon it. 
These things which Cornelius had did not save him, 
but they prepared him to find and receive the truth as 
it is in Christ Jesus, and thereby to be saved. 

II. How Cornelius Found Salvation and Be¬ 
came Not Only a Good Man But a Saved 
Man and a Child of God 

Now let us look at how Cornelius found salvation 
and became not only “a good man,” but “ a saved 
man ” and “ a child of God.” 

1. First of all, Cornelius prayed for light. This 
appears from God’s saying to him, “ Thy prayer is 
heard . . . Send therefore to Joppa and fetch 

Simon, whose surname is Peter, who shall speak 
unto thee words whereby thou shalt be saved ” (Acts 
10:31, 32, comp. Acts 10:22 and Acts 11:13, 
14). Cornelius felt that he had not the whole truth. 
He knew that he had not peace. He knew that for 


62 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


all his excellencies of character he was a sinner and 
needed pardon, and he sought from God to find out 
where pardon could be found. Whosoever desires 
to know the truth, and whosoever desires pardon, let 
him seek light from God, let him ask God to point 
him to the One in Whom pardon is to be found. 
That prayer will not save him, but it will lead him 
to the One Who will save him. I could stand here 
by the hour and give you illustrations of men and 
women whom I have known from pretty much every 
rank of society, who were in sincere doubt as to 
whether Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and 
whether He could and would save, but who sought 
light from God and got it, and were thus brought 
to an intelligent faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of 
God, and as their own personal crucified and risen 
Saviour, and thereby found salvation. 

2. In the second place, Cornelius obeyed, step by 
step, the light as God gave him to see it. There are 
some who will not take one single step until God 
shows them the whole way. Such people never find 
the way. But if we are ready to take a step at a 
time as God indicates it to us, God will lead us on 
and on into the perfect day. For example, I know 
men who will not take the steps in the truth, which 
they acknowledge are perfectly clear, because they 
do not yet understand all the mysteries concerning 
future punishment and God’s purposes concerning 
the heathen and predestination and other questions 
like that. Cornelius was not like that. Cornelius 
only asked to see a step at a time; and as soon as 
he saw the next step he took that, and therefore he 
was soon out in the clear daylight. So will it be 


A CHILD OF GOD 


63 


with you if you will follow Cornelius 1 example. 
The very first step that Cornelius was bidden to take 
was a test of faith: he was bidden to send for an 
unknown Jew in a tanyard, who should show him 
the way of life. How absurd that must have looked, 
were not the Jews in subjection to the Romans? and 
was not Rome the land of culture and Judea the 
land of superstition? and was not this particular 
Jew an uneducated man, and should he, a cultured 
Roman officer, send for an ignorant Jew to teach 
him? But Cornelius knew God had commanded it; 
so he raised no objections and asked no questions, 
but obeyed orders and did exactly as he was told. 
Ah, how many of us refuse to obey God’s orders be¬ 
cause we are so filled with the conceit of our own 
culture and our own superior position; and therefore 
we never get out of the fog and darkness into which 
our self-sufficiency has plunged us. We proudly re¬ 
fuse to obey God because we cannot understand the 
reasonableness of His commands, and so we miss 
the path of unquestioning obedience to God that 
would lead us into the glorious light of the Son 
of God. 

3. The third step that Cornelius took toward 
salvation was that, He heard the simple Gospel of 
Christ crucified and Christ risen again, and of remis¬ 
sion of sins to he obtained through simple faith in 
this crucified and risen Christ Jesus, the Lord of all . 
The sermon that Cornelius heard was very short, 
and it was the first Christian sermon he had ever 
heard. He may have heard before that there was 
such a person as Jesus, but he knew little or nothing 
about Him. Peter simply told him a few funda- 


64 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


mental facts about Jesus, how God “ preached good 
tidings of peace by Him,” how Jesus Christ was 
“ Lord of all,” “ how God anointed Him with the 
Holy Spirit and with power,” and how He “ went 
about doing good, and healing all that were op¬ 
pressed of -the devil; for God was with him.” Peter 
told him how he, himself, was witness of all things 
which Jesus of Nazareth did, and then he told him 
how they slew Him and “ hanged him on a tree,” 
and then he told him how on the third day “ God 
raised him up,” and how he, himself, was an eye¬ 
witness of His appearances in His body after Plis 
resurrection and had “ eaten and drank with Jesus 
after he arose from the dead,” then he told him how 
this Jesus was “ ordained of God to be the judge of 
the living and the dead,” and how “ to him hear all 
the prophets witness, that through his name every¬ 
one that helieveth on him shall receive remission of 
sins” (Acts 10:34-43). That was all that Peter 
told him, and that was enough. Cornelius believed 
it and was instantly saved. All that Cornelius heard 
you have heard time and time again, and as far as 
hearing and knowing the truth is concerned, you 
have heard enough and already know enough to be 
saved. 

4. Then Cornelius took the decisive step. He be¬ 
lieved in Jesus Christ right there and then, and zvas 
saved at once. Will you take the same decisive step 
to-night, the simple step of believing on Christ Jesus, 
of Whom it is conclusively proven that He died on 
the cross and thus made full atonement for sin, and 
secured pardon for all who would believe on Him, 
and that “ He arose again ” and therefore has power 


A CHILD OP GOD 


65 


to keep from the power of sin all those who put their 
trust in Him? (Heb. 7:25). 

As good and exemplary as Cornelius was, he was 
saved in the same way that the coarse, brutal, prayer¬ 
less, godless Philippian jailor in the sixteenth chap¬ 
ter of the Acts of the Apostles was saved, that is by 
simple faith in Jesus Christ for the pardon of sin 
and for deliverance from sin’s power. 

When Peter spoke of the “ forgiveness of sins,” 
Cornelius knew he needed it, and if you have not 
already received Jesus Christ as your own personal 
Saviour, you need it to-night, and when Peter said, 
“ Whosoever believeth in him shall receive remis¬ 
sion of sins,” Cornelius said to himself, “ That means 
me,” and he believed right then and there, and “ re¬ 
ceived remission of sins ” right then and there. 
Anyone here to-night can receive remission of sins 
in exactly the same way that Cornelius did, and just 
as quickly as Cornelius did. The word preached to 
Cornelius says, “ Through his name everyone that 
believeth on him shall receive remission of sins” 
Even though you are as good as Cornelius you need 
pardon: even though you are as vile as the vilest 
you can have it, (f Everyone that believeth on him 
shall receive remission of sins” Let me call your 
attention to one thing more. The Holy Spirit came 
upon Cornelius then and there, in testimony to the 
fact that God had accepted him, and he began to 
“ magnify God ” in the power of the Holy Spirit. 
And so not only pardon, but the Holy Spirit’s power 
is for everyone here to-night who will believe on the 
Lord Jesus, and claim it. 

5. There is still one more thing that Cornelius 


66 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


did that needs to be caref ully noted, Cornelius openly 
confessed in baptism his acceptance of Jesus Christ 
and his identification with Him. He was already 
saved. He already had God’s seal of acceptance, the 
definite, conscious work of the Holy Spirit, but that 
did not make him say, “ There is no need that I 
be baptized. I have got everything already.” No, 
rather it made him say, “ I want to obey God and 
confess my faith in Jesus Christ in God’s appointed 
way, by baptism.” The faith in Jesus Christ that 
Cornelius had was real, saving faith, and saving 
faith always leads to obedience, and the Christ in 
whom Cornelius believed as Saviour and Lord had 
commanded baptism, so he was baptized right off. 
And, if you really believe in Jesus Christ, you will 
desire to obey Christ in everything, and if you have 
not been baptized already you will desire to be bap¬ 
tized, and even if you have been baptized already 
you will do that for which baptism is an outward 
sign, make an open confession of your acceptance 
of Jesus Christ as your crucified, dead and buried 
and risen Lord and Saviour. 

Salvation is open to everyone here to-night. It 
cannot be obtained by any amount of piety toward 
God, or righteousness toward man, or generosity in 
giving, or earnest praying, or sincerity in the search 
for the truth. By one and all, good and bad, moral 
and immoral, highly respected and utterly despised, 
it must be obtained in the same way, that is by a 
simple faith in Christ Jesus, who died for us on the 
cross of Calvary and rose again, faith in Him as 
your Saviour and your Lord. Who will thus put 
their faith in Him to-night? 


V 


“ SAVED BY A CRY ” 

“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord 
shall be saved!’ —Romans 10:13. 

T HERE is no excuse for any man’s not know¬ 
ing the way of salvation, for the Bible makes 
it as plain as day. There is no excuse for 
any man’s not taking the way of salvation, for God 
has made that way so simple and so open to every¬ 
body that “ whosoever will ” may “ come.” Many 
years ago, together with a friend, I was making a 
pedestrian tour through the Saxon Switzerland, in 
Saxony, Germany. One day we struck off from the 
main road and began to go across country by a by¬ 
path. We suddenly ran upon a signboard with a 
crown upon it and the information that that road 
was for the king and for the king alone, and that 
common mortals were not allowed that way. But 
God’s way of salvation is open to all, “ Whosoever 
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be 
saved.” 

The way of salvation is stated in the Bible in a 
variety of forms; so that everybody can get hold 
of it. In one place we are told that we are saved 
by just coming to Jesus . He Himself says, in Matt. 
11: 28 : “ Come unto me, all ye that labour and 

67 


68 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and He 
says again in Jno. 6:37* “Him that cometh to me 
I will in no wise cast out.” In another place we 
are told that we are saved by just believing on the 
Lord Jesus. Paul said to the jailor of Philippi 
when the jailor had cried, “ Sirs, what must I do to 
be saved”, “Believe on the Lord Jesus and 
thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31). In another 
place we are told that, We are saved by just receiv¬ 
ing (or, taking) the Lord Jesus. John’s words are, 
“As many as received him, to them gave he the 
right to become children of God, even to them that 
believe on his name” (Jno. 1:12). In still another 
place we are told that, We are saved by just looking 
to Jehovah, Jesus. Jehovah says in Isa. 45:22, 
“ Look unto me, and be ye saved” 

But to my mind, the simplest statement of all is 
that of our text to-night, where we are told that, 
We are saved by just calling on the name of the 
Lord, “Whosoever shall call upon the name 
of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:13). 
Saved simply by a cry, a cry to the Lord Jesus; for 
that Jesus is “ the Lord ” in this passage is evident 
from the ninth verse of the same chapter, where we 
are told, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth 
Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that 
God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” 

The statement of the way of salvation contained 
in our text is so simple that some stumble at its very 
simplicity. “ Oh,” they say, “ God can’t mean that 
all I have to do to be saved is just to cry to the 
Lord Jesus, simply call upon the name of the 


SAVED BY A CRY 


69 


Lord.” But that is what God says, and do you not 
think that God knows enough to say exactly what 
He means? 

In order that there might be no possible doubt that 
He meant just what He said, God has put this state¬ 
ment in three different places in the Bible. You 
will find it first of all way back in the Old Testa¬ 
ment, in Joel 2:32, where we read, “ Whosoever 
shall call on the name of Jehovah shall be delivered.” 
Then Peter repeated the statement on the Day of 
Pentecost, saying, “ And it shall be, that whosoever 
shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved ” 
(Acts 2:21), and Paul repeats it again here in our 
text, Rom. 10:13, “Whosoever shall call upon the 
name of the Lord shall be saved.” It is very seldom 
that you can find the very same statement made 
three different times in the Word of God. Can you 
doubt a statement God takes pains to repeat three 
times? 

And that is not all. Besides this, God gives us in 
the Bible a number of examples of men who were 
saved just this way, just by a cry, just by calling to 
the Lord Jesus for deliverance. Peter is as good 
an example as any. Peter was sinking in the Sea of 
Galilee as he tried to walk across the waves to meet 
Jesus, and in his terror he just cried to Jesus, just 
as he was going down, “ Lord, save me.” “ And 
immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and took 
hold of him” (Matt. 14:30, 31). Saved just by a 
cry, and anyone who is sinking in a sea of sin can 
be saved in precisely the same way. Jesus is ready 
to take hold of you to-night if you only cry to Him, 
and if He takes hold of you, your rescue is sure. 


70 HOW TO BE SAVED 

There are three important questions suggested by 
our text: 

1st. What is the salvation promised? 

2nd. How can we get this salvation? 

3rd. Who can have this salvation? 

I. What is the Salvation Promised? 

The first question is, “ What is the salvation 
promised? ” The ans wer to this question is very 
plain and very easily understood. Listen to the text 
again, “ Whosoever shall call on the name of the 
Lord shall be saved.” Saved from what? If you 
will go back to the preceding chapters of this same 
book from which our text is taken you will get your 
answer. 

1. First of all, The one who calls on the name 
of the Lord will he saved from the guilt of sin. 
This comes out in the third chapter, verses 23-26, 
“ For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of 
God; being justified freely by his grace through 
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God 
set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his 
blood, to show his righteousness because of the 
passing over of the sins done aforetime in the for¬ 
bearance of God; for the showing, I say, of his 
righteousness at this present season: that he might 
himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath 
faith in Jesus?* We see from these verses that the 
one zuho calls on the Lord Jesus gets for himself jus¬ 
tification, i. e., deliverance from condemnation, salva¬ 
tion from the guilt of sin, that the Lord Jesus made 
possible for us all by dying as a propitiation for our 
sins on the cross. The same thought of salvation is 


SAVED BY A CRY 


71 


found in Gal. 3:10, 13, “ For as many as are of 
works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, 
Cursed is everyone who continueth not in all things 
that are written in the Book of the Law to do them. 
. . . Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of 

the law, having become a curse for us; for it is writ¬ 
ten, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” 
Christ took our place on the cross of Calvary, and 
the moment we believe on Him we step into His 
place of perfect acceptance before God; not only is 
every one of our sins blotted out, but His perfect 
righteousness is put to our account; and the simplest 
and most practical way of expressing our faith in 
Him is by just calling upon Him. Crying unto Him 
for pardon is the proof that we believe on Him; 
and so in crying unto Him we are thereby justified. 
This we are told also in the very next verse to our 
text, Rom. 10: 14, “ How then shall they call on him 
in whom they have not believed? ” The moment we 
thus call upon the Lord Jesus, all our sins are 
blotted out, God Himself erases everything He has 
in His books against us, and puts the perfect right¬ 
eousness and acceptability of Christ Jesus to our 
account. 

2. But that is not all: in the second place, The 
one who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus gets 
salvation from the power of sin. This we see 
in chapter 6, verse 16, compared with Jno. 8: 34, 36. 
In Romans 6:16 we read, “ Know ye not that to 
whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedi¬ 
ence, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether 
of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteous¬ 
ness?” The word translated “servants” in this 


72 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


verse, means literally “ slaves.” Every sinner is a 
slave of the sin to which he has yielded obedience, 
but the moment he calls upon the Lord Jesus he gets 
deliverance from this bondage, just as the demoniac 
who cried to the Lord got deliverance from his bond¬ 
age to the demon, and the leper who cried to the 
Lord got deliverance from his leprosy. The Lord 
Jesus Himself puts it this way in John 8:36, “If 
therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be 
free indeed.” 

Our Lord Jesus not only died for us, and thus 
made salvation from the guilt of sin possible for us, 
but He also rose again and thus also made salvation 
from the power of sin possible for us. This thought 
of the saving power of the risen Lord Jesus comes 
out right in the same chapter from which our text is 
taken, three verses back, “If thou shalt confess with 
thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine 
heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt 
be saved: for with the heart man believeth unto 
righteousness, and with the mouth confession is 
made unto salvation ” (verses 9, 10). 

3. In the third place, The one who calls on the 
name of the Lord gets also salvation from the 
penalty of sin. This also we see in chapter 6, 
verse 23, “ For the wages of sin is death, but the 
free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our 
Lord.” The one who calls upon the name of the 
Lord, and the context shows that the Lord here 
meant is the Lord Jesus (verse 9), the one who 
cries unto Jesus as his Divine Lord, for deliverance, 
gets deliverance from the death that is the penalty 
of sin. What this “ death ” is in its full outworking 


73 


SAVED BY A CRY 

✓ 

and significance we see in Rev. 21:8, “ The fearful, 
and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and 
whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and 
all liars, shall have their part in the lake which 
burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second 
death” Hell, in spite of all its awful and everlast¬ 
ing shame and pain, has no terrors whatever for the 
one who calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus; for 
he knows on the authority of God’s own sure word 
that no matter how great a sinner he may have been, 
he has no part in the eternal shame and torment 
of hell. 

To sum it all up: Salvation from the guilt of sin, 
Salvation from the power of sin, Salvation from the 
eternal penalty of sin, is the salvation one gets by 
just calling on the Lord Jesus for such salvation. 
That certainly is a glorious salvation. But even that 
is not all; for we are not only saved from something, 
but we are saved to something. We are not only 
saved from the guilt of sin and from the power of 
sin and from the eternal penalty of sin, but we are 
saved to liberty, to sonship of God, and to an in¬ 
heritance, even a “ Joint Inheritance with Jesus 
Christ ” Himself. This we read in the eighth chapter 
and second verse, “ For the law of the spirit of life 
in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin 
and death,” and in the fourteenth verse, “ For as 
many as are led by the spirit of God, these are the 
sons of God,” and in verses 16, 17, “ The Spirit him¬ 
self, beareth witness with our spirit, that we are 
children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs 
of God, and joint heirs with Christ ” 


.7 4 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


II. How Can We Get This Salvation? 

Now the question arises, How can we get this 
salvation? The text tells us that we get this salvation 
by simply calling “ Upon the name of the Lord 
“ Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord 
shall be saved.” 

What does it mean to “ Call upon the name of the 
Lord?” It means just what it says, all any one of 
you has to do to be saved is to call upon the Lord 
Jesus (verse 9) to save you. This is evident from 
the preceding verse, “ For there is no distinction be¬ 
tween the Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is 
Lord of all, and is rich unto all that call upon him.” 
Bartimaeus was blind, and he got sight by crying, 
“ Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me ” 
(Mark 10:47 ff-). The leper got cleansing by cry¬ 
ing to the Lord Jesus, “If thou wilt, thou canst 
make me clean,” “ And being moved with compas¬ 
sion, he (that is, Jesus) stretched forth his hand 
and touched him, and saith unto him, I will, be thou 
made clean” (Mark 1:40, 41). The publican got 
pardon by just crying, “ God, be merciful to me, a 
sinner,” and so we get salvation from the guilt, 

THE POWER AND THE PENALTY OF SIN BY JUST CRY¬ 
ING to the Lord Jesus for it. 

Of course, the cry to the Lord Jesus that really 
gets salvation must be a real cry, it must be genuine, 
it must be sincere, it must be honest. I hear a good 
many call, “ Lord Jesus, save me,” and they do not 
get saved. Why? Because the cry is not real, it 
is not genuine, it is not sincere, it is not honest, it 
is not earnest. 

\ 


SAVED BY A CRY 


75 


IVhat does a real call upon the Lord Jesus for 
salvation imply? 

I. First of all, A real call upon the Lord Jesus 
implies a realization that we need salvation, a real¬ 
ization that we are sinners, a realization that we are 
lost. No man is going to call upon the Lord for 
salvation in any real way if he does not realize that 
he needs to be saved. To call upon the Lord Jesus 
to save you when you do not know you are really 
lost, or do not believe you are really lost, is a 
mockery. 

A good many, however, call upon the Lord Jesus 
in these days without any genuine realization that 
they are lost. A good many cry in this day, “ Lord 
Jesus, save me,” and yet if you should ask them, 
“ Do you really believe you are lost, do you really 
believe you are a guilty sinner before a Holy God, 
do you really believe you are under the curse of the 
law of God which you have broken, do you realize 
you are a slave to sin, do you realize you are sink¬ 
ing down into an everlasting hell, do you believe that 
you are a poor, vile, miserable, worthless, hell¬ 
deserving sinner,” they would very likely flare up 
and say, “ I am nothing of the kind, I am just as 
good as you are. I don’t believe that old worn-out 
superstition about human depravity and everlasting 
perdition, and all that.” Well, then, you cannot gen¬ 
uinely call upon the Lord Jesus to save you, and you 
cannot be genuinely saved. You are mocking God 
when you do call upon the Lord for salvation when 
you do not really think you are lost, hopelessly lost, 
without the Lord Jesus. There is no more hideous 


76 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


mockery than for a man who does not believe that 
he is lost, to call on the Lord Jesus to save him. 

2. In the second place, A real calling upon the 
Lord Jesus to save, implies a sincere desire for 
salvation. A great many men call upon the Lord 
Jesus to save them who do not really desire to be 
saved, they think they do, but they don’t. I have 
seen men kneel down and cry, “ Lord Jesus, save 
me,” and they did not want a bit to be saved. Per¬ 
haps they thought they did. They wished to be 
saved from hell, but that is not the essential point 
of salvation. Everybody wants to be saved from 
hell. Even the rankest infidels want to be saved 
from hell. Nobody wants to spend eternity in hell. 
But being saved from hell is not the essential thing 
in real salvation, and desiring merely to be saved 
from hell is not really desiring to be saved. Many 
desire to be saved from the trouble and misery that 
sin has gotten them into. There is not a person in 
the county jail that does not want to get out. But 
desiring to be saved from the consequences of sin is 
not a true desire for salvation. A true desire for 
salvation is a desire for salvation from sin itself, 
that is the most important thing about it; and the 
man who does not desire to give up all sin, and not 
merely the sins that are getting him into trouble, 
does not really desire to be saved, and a call of such 
a person upon the Lord Jesus is a mockery and will 
do him no more good than whistling “ I want to be 
an angel.” This is why the cries of many of you 
for salvation do you no good whatever. You don’t 
really wish to be saved from sin, but merely from 
the unpleasant consequences of sin. A man in Chi- 


SAVED BY A CRY 


77 


cago was once lamenting to a friend of mine that 
he could not be saved. My friend answered bluntly, 
“ You don’t want to be saved.” “ Yes, I do,” the 
man answered with tears. “ No, you don’t,” my 
friend insisted. Then he asked him, “ Do you want 
to quit drinking?” The man was silent a while and 
then said, “ I don’t know as I do.” That is the way 
with thousands. Others may wish to quit drinking, 
but there are other sins they do not wish to quit. 
Do you really desire to quit all sin, to quit doing 
anything and everything that displeases God? If 
you do, you have a real desire for salvation, and if 
you cry to the Lord Jesus He will save you, 
“Blessed are they,” says Jesus Christ, "who hunger 
and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be 
filled” (Matt 5:6). 

The desire for salvation must, of course, also be 
earnest, it must be a desire to be saved at any cost. 
When a man so earnestly desires salvation from the 
guilt, the power and the consequences of sin, that he 
is willing to pay any price to get it, he will get it; 
and not until then. God says in Jeremiah 29: 13, 
“Ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search 
for me with all your heart.” 

3. In the third place, A real calling upon the 
name of the Lord for salvation implies a throwing 
away of all confidence in anyone else and in any¬ 
thing else and everything else as a way of 
salvation. The man who is trying to save him¬ 
self cannot honestly call upon the Lord Jesus to 
save him; and the man who is trusting in his own 
good works, his own personal piety and his own 
benevolence, his turning over a new leaf or any 


78 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


other thing he can do, to save him, cannot truly call 
on the Lord. This is the trouble with many of you, 
you have not gotten to the end of yourself and your 
own efforts; you still hope to do something to com¬ 
mend you to the Lord. It is the man who realizes 
his own helplessness, his own inability to do anything 
to cover his guilt or to break away from sin or to 
escape its consequences, that can throw himself in 
utter helplessness on the Lord Jesus and just cry 
unto Him to save him, just cry as poor, sinking 
Peter cried, “ Lord, save me.” 

4. There is one more thing that An honest call 
upon the Lord Jesus implies, and that is faith in 
him, faith in his power to save. This comes out in 
the verse immediately following our text, Rom. 
10: 14, “How then shall they call on him in whom 
they have not believed?” If my cry to the Lord 
Jesus means anything, it means this: faith that Jesus 
can and will save me. This faith may not be very 
strong, it may not be very confident, it may be very 
weak, but there must be faith enough to call with 
some expectation, no matter how small, that we shall 
be saved. We may have to come to Jesus with just 
a little faith, like the man whose son w r as a demoniac, 
and he cried to Jesus, “If thou canst do anything, 
have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus, as you 
know, said unto him, “ If thou canst believe, all 
things are possible to him that believeth.” “And 
straightway the father of the child cried out, and 
said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine un¬ 
belief.” And the Lord Jesus did respond to his 
feeble faith, and helped his unbelief by doing what 
he sought (Mark 9:22, 27) ; and so will He do for 


SAVED BY A CRY 


79 


us if we come in that honest, earnest way, even 
though our faith is small. All one needs to do 

THEN, IN ORDER TO BE SAVED IS, FIRST OF ALL, TO 
REALIZE HIS OWN NEED OF SALVATION; SECOND, TO 
EARNESTLY DESIRE TO BE SAVED; THIRD, TO THROW 
AWAY ALL TRUST IN ANYONE AND ANYTHING ELSE 

but in Jesus Christ; and fourth, to believe He 

CAN AND WILL SAVE, AND THEN JUST CALL UPON 

Him to do it. That is all, “ Whosoever shall call 
upon the name of the Lord shall be saved ” (Rom. 
io:13). 

III. Who Can Have This Salvation? 

Now, just a few words on, “ Who can have this 
salvation/” The answer to this question is very 
plain, as set forth in the text, “Whosoever shall 
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved ” 
(Rom. 10:13). The Greek words translated, 
“ whosoever,” mean “ everyone who.” I sometimes 
wish that the verse had been translated literally and 
so read in this way, “ Everyone who shall call upon 
the name of the Lord shall be saved.” That surely 
means everybody. It means rich or poor, wise or 
foolish, learned or ignorant, good or bad, moral or 
vicious. John Berridge once said in preaching on 
this text, “ I would much rather it be written * who¬ 
soever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be 
saved/ than, ‘ If John Berridge shall call on the 
name of the Lord, John Berridge shall be saved/ 
because how do I know but that there might be an¬ 
other John Berridge in the world to whom these 
words were addressed? But when I read, ‘ Whoso¬ 
ever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be 


.80 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


saved/ I know I must be included.” Yes, thank 
God, that is the way it reads, “ Whosoever (or, 
everyone who) shall call upon the name of the Lord 
shall be saved.” The good man can get salvation 
in this way and in no other way, and the bad man 
can get salvation in this way and in no other way . 
All any man needs to know in order to be saved is 
just enough to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus. 
The skeptic may be saved this way. He may have 
many doubts, but if he believes he is lost and honestly 
desires to be saved, and will throw away confidence 
in everyone and everything else, and have enough 
faith to just call, even though it be almost in despair, 
on the Lord Jesus, he can put to a practical test this 
promise, “ Whosoever shall call on the name of the 
Lord shall be saved.” Many are saying, “ I have 
sinned away the day of grace and therefore I cannot 
be saved,” but God says, " Whosoever shall call upon 
the name of the Lord shall be saved.” All you then, 
as well as anybody else, have to do is just to call. 
Just call then. Another says, “ I have committed 
the unpardonable sin, therefore there is no hope for 
me,” but God says, “ Whosoever shall call upon the 
name of the Lord shall be saved.” Just call, then. 
Another says, “ But my sins have been so many and 
so black there is no hope for me,” but God says, 
“ Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord 
shall be saved.” Just call, then. Another says, 
“ But I have had so much light and sinned against it, 
there certainly can be no hope for me,” but God 
says, “ Whosoever shall call upon the name of the 
Lord shall be saved.” Just call, then. But another 
says, “ I have no feeling, my heart is hard as a stone. 


SAVED BY A CRY 


81 


Surely there is no hope for me,” but God says, 
“ Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord 
shall be saved.” Just call, then. But another says, 
“ I am sure I cannot hold out even if I start, so 
there is no hope ^or me,” but God says, “ Whosoever 
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” 
Just call, then. 44 Whosoever,” “ Whosoever ” 
“Whosoever.” This wonderful text sweeps away 
all our excuses. It throws the door wide open for 
anyone here to-night who has any real desire to be 
saved, to enter. “ Some old divine pictured Peter 
preaching on the Day of Pentecost, a man pushed 
his way through the crowd and said, * Peter, do you 
think there is hope for me? I am the man who 
made that crown of thorns and placed them upon 
Christ’s brow, do you think He will save me?’ 
‘Yes,’ said Peter, 4 Whosoever shall call upon the 
name of the Lord shall be saved,’ and you are a 
“ Whosoever;” if you call he will hear your cry. 
He will answer your prayer and save you.’ Another 
man pushed his way up and said, 4 Peter, I am the 
man who took the reed out of his hand and drove 
it upon that cruel crown of thorns, sending it into 
his brow; do you think he will save me?’ 4 Yes,’ 
said Peter, 4 Whosoever shall call upon the name of 
the Lord shall be saved.’ You are a 44 Whosoever,” 
and you call upon the name of the Lord and you 
shall be saved.’ Another man, elbowing his way 
through the crowd, pushed up to Peter and said, 4 1 
am the Roman soldier who took the spear and thrust 
it to his heart, when there came out blood and water; 
do you think there is hope for me?’ 4 Yes,’ said 
Peter, 4 There is a nearer way of reaching his heart 


82 HOW TO BE SAVED 

than that: ‘Whosoever shall call upon the name of 
the Lord shall be saved ’ (Pith & Point in Story and 
Saying, pp. 16, 17). Yes, it is true, “Whosoever,” 
“Whosoever” “Whosoever” shall call upon the 
name of the Lord shall be saved.” Who will call 
to-night? Who will awaken to-night to the fact that 
you need salvation, that you are a poor, vile, lost, 
worthless, miserable, hell-deserving sinner? Who 
will let God to-night put into his heart a real desire 
to be saved, to be saved not merely from the un¬ 
pleasant consequences of sin but to be saved from 
sin itself? Who will right now throw away all con¬ 
fidence in any one else or in anything else and every¬ 
thing else as a way of salvation, except the crucified 
and risen Son of God? Who will to-night put faith 
enough in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ’s ability to 
save him, just to call upon Him, even though it be 
with very feeble expectation of being heard? Salva¬ 
tion stands waiting at the door to enter the heart and 
life of every unsaved man, woman and child here 
to-night. All you have to do to open the door wide 
for salvation is just to “ call upon the name of the 
Lord” Jesus. Will you do it right now? 


% 


VI 

HOW TO BE UNSPEAKABLY HAPPY 
AT ALL TIMES AND UNDER 
ALL CIRCUMSTANCES 

“ Whom, not having seen ye love; on whom, 
though now ye see him not, yet BELIEVING, ye 
rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of 
glory” —I Peter i :8. 

1 HAVE here a beautiful text, a text that you 
all know, but I wonder how many of you have 
ever pondered it enough to take in all its won¬ 
derful wealth of meaning? 

A young woman in England many years ago al¬ 
ways wore a golden locket that she would not allow 
anyone to open or look into, and everyone thought 
there must be some romance connected with that 
locket and that in that locket must be the picture of 
the one she loved. The young woman died at an 
early age, and after her death the locket was opened, 
everyone wondering whose face they would find 
within. And in the locket was found simply a little 
slip of paper with these words written upon it, 
“ Whom having not seen, I love.” Her Lord Jesus 
was the only Lover she knew and the only Lover 
she longed for, and she had gone to be with Him, 

83 


84 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


the one object of her whole heart’s devotion, the un¬ 
seen but beloved Saviour. 

But it is to the last part of the verse that I wish 
to call your particular attention to-night, “ On whom, 
though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice 
greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” 

This text informs us (and many of us do not need 
to be informed of it, for we know it by blessed ex¬ 
perience) that the one who really believes on Jesus 
Christ, our unseen, but ever living Lord and 
Saviour, rejoices with “joy unspeakable and full 
of glory.” The Greek word translated “joy” is a 
very strong word, describing extreme joy or exult¬ 
ant joy. The word “ unspeakable ” declares that this 
exultant joy is of such a character that we cannot, 
by any possibility, tell it all out to others. Every¬ 
one who really believes on the Lord Jesus does re¬ 
joice with an exultant joy that is beyond all descrip¬ 
tion. And those who do truly believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ are the only ones who do thus rejoice. 
Others may have a certain amount of joy, a certain 
measure of gladness, but the only people who really 
know “joy unspeakable and full of glory” are those 
who really believe on Jesus Christ. 

Who is there among us who does not wish to be 
happy? Happiness is the one thing all men are 
seeking. One man seeks it in one way, and another 
man seeks it in another way, but all men are in pur¬ 
suit of it. Even the man who is “ happy only when 
he is miserable,” is seeking happiness in this strange 
way of cultivating a delightful melancholy by always 
looking on the dark side of things. One man seeks 
money because he thinks that money will make a 


HOW TO BE HAPPY 


85 


man happy. Another man seeks worldly pleasure 
because he thinks that worldly pleasure will make a 
man happy. Still another seeks learning, the knowl¬ 
edge of science, or philosophy, or history, or litera¬ 
ture, because he thinks that learning brings the true 
joy; but they are all in pursuit of the one thing, 
happiness. 

The vast majority of men who seek happiness do 
not find it. You may say what you please, but for 
the majority of men this is an unhappy world. I 
go down into the houses of the poor, I do not find 
many happy people there. I go into the homes of 
the rich, I do not find many happy people even there. 
Study the faces of the people you meet on the cars, 
on the street, at entertainments, or anywhere else, 
how many really radiant faces do you see? When 
you do see one it is so exceptional that you note it 
at once. But there is a way, and a very simple way, 
a very sure way, and a way that is open to all, not 
only to find happiness, but to be unspeakably happy. 
Our text tells us what that way is. Listen, “ On 
whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, 
ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of 
glory” This statement of Peter’s is true. How do 
I know it is true? In the first place, I know it is 
true because the Word of God says so. Whatever 
this book says is true. In the second place, I know 
it is true because I have put the matter to the test 
of personal experiment, and found it true. A good 
many people say, “ I do not believe the Bible.” 
Well, I do. I believe the Bible for a good many 
sufficient reasons; but there is this one reason why 
I believe the Bible that I wish to mention to-night. 


.86 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


I believe the Bible because I have personally tested 
scores and scores of its most astonishing and appar¬ 
ently most incredible statements and found every 
one of them true in my own experience. Do you 
not think if I knew a man who made very many 
statements that I could test for myself, some of them 
apparently incredible, and I tested these statements 
one after another through a long period of years, 
and found everyone of them true, and never one 
single statement failed, do you not think that I would 
believe that man after a while? Well, that is just 
my experience with the Bible, and I believe it. I 
would be a fool if I did not. The statement of the 
text is one of those that I have tested, and I have 
found it true. 

I was not always happy. Indeed, I was once un¬ 
speakably miserable. I had sought happiness very 
earnestly. I had sought happiness in gaiety and sin, 
and found, not joy, but wretchedness. In my pur¬ 
suit of happiness I had tried study, the study of lan¬ 
guages, science, philosophy and literature, but I did 
not find happiness in these things. At last I turned 
to Jesus Christ and believed on Him, and I found 
not merely happiness, but something better, joy, 
“ joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Whatever 
Heaven may be or may not be, I know that on this 
earth the one who really believes on Jesus Christ, 
the one who puts himself in Christ’s hands, to be 
led, and taught, and guided, and strengthened, puts 
himself in the hands of Jesus Christ for Jesus Christ 
to do all He will with him, I know that such a per¬ 
son finds “ joy unspeakable and full of glory.” 


HOW TO BE HAPPY 


87 


I. Why Those Who Believe in Jesus Christ 

Have Joy Unspeakable and Full of Glory 

Why do those who believe in Jesus Christ have 
“joy unspeakable and full of glory”? 

i. First of all, Those who believe on Jesus Christ 
have “joy unspeakable and full of glory” because 
they know that their sins are all forgiven. It is a 
wonderful thing to know that your sins are all for¬ 
given, to know that there is not one single, slightest 
cloud between you and God, to know that no matter 
how many, or how great your sins may have been, 
that they are all blotted out, to know that God has 
put them all behind His back where no one can 
ever get at them, to know that God has sunken all 
your sins in the depths of the sea from which they 
can never be raised; that they are all gone. A little 
boy once asked his mother, “ Mother, where are our 
sins after they are blotted out?” His mother re¬ 
plied, “ My boy, where are those figures that were 
on your slate yesterday ? ” He answered, “ I rubbed 
them out.” Then she asked, “ Where are they 
now?” He replied, “ They are nowhere.” “Well,” 
she said, “ That is just so with your sins when God 
has blotted them out. They are nowhere. They 
have ceased to be.” Oh, friends, what a joy it is 
to know that there is not one single smallest cloud 
between you and the Holy God whom we call 
Father and Who rules this universe. Suppose that 
you had offended against the laws of the nation and 
had been committed to prison on a life sentence, and 
a pardon were brought you, do you not think you 
would be happy? But that is nothing compared 


88 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


with the joy of knowing that your every sin is 
blotted out. Some years ago Governor Stuart of 
Pennsylvania determined to pardon one of the prison¬ 
ers in the Pennsylvania state’s prison, so he sent for 
Mr. Moody and said to him, “ I have determined to 
pardon one of the prisoners in our state’s prison, 
and I want you to go and take the pardon to him. 
You can preach to the prisoners if you want to while 
you are doing it.” So Mr. Moody went, carrying 
the pardon with him, and before he began to preach 
he said, “ I have a pardon for one of you men that 
the Governor has sent by me.” He did not intend 
to tell who it was who was pardoned until the ser¬ 
mon was over, but as he looked around upon his 
audience and saw how anxious they all were, how 
eager they were, how a very agony of suspense was 
in their faces, Mr. Moody thought, “ This will never 
do, I can’t keep these men in this suspense,” so he 
said, “ I will tell you now who the man is,” and he 
read his name from the pardon. Do you not think 
that that was a glad moment for that one man out 
of those hundreds of prisoners, a glad moment for 
the one man who had the Governor’s pardon, and 
who could walk out of prison a free man? Ah, but 
that is nothing to knowing that the eternal God has 
eternally pardoned your sins. Every true Christian 
knows that, he knows that every one of his sins is 
forgiven. How does he know it? Because the 
Bible says so in many places. It says for example, 
in Acts 13:39, ‘‘By him everyone that helieveth is 
justified from all things,” so we know it because God 
says so. But no one but the believer on Jesus Christ 
knows that his sins are all forgiven. If anyone who 


HOW TO BE HAPPY 


89 


is not a believer on Jesus Christ says, “ I know my 
sins are all forgiven,” he says what is not true; for 
they do not know it, and cannot know it, for it is 
not a fact: but a Christian knows it because the 
Word of God says so. 

The Christian knows his sins are all forgiven for 
another reason: that is, because the Holy Spirit 
bears witness in his own heart to the fact. One day 
when the Apostle Peter was preaching to Cornelius, 
the Roman officer, and to his household, he said, 
“To him bear all the prophets witness that through 
his name everyone that believeth on him shall receive 
remission of sins” (Acts 10:43), an d everyone in 
his audience believed it. The Spirit of God de¬ 
scended right then and there and filled their hearts 
with the knowledge of sins forgiven, and they 
“ began to magnify God ” with exultant hearts and 
exultant voices. I tell you that was a joyful 
meeting. 

A king, a great king, once wrote one of the great¬ 
est songs that was ever written. That song has 
lasted through the ages. It has been sung and is 
still being sung by thousands. It has been sung by 
millions, and though it was written many centuries 
ago, it is just as sweet to-day as the day the king 
wrote it. The man who wrote this song was a great 
king, the greatest king of his day, he was also one 
of the greatest generals of his day, one of the great¬ 
est generals of any day. He had great armies, the 
all-conquering armies of the day. He had a mag¬ 
nificent palace. I do not suppose that any other 
earthly king was ever so beloved as he was. His 
song was about joy and about happiness. He does 


90 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


not say in that song, “ How happy is the man who 
is a great king,” or, “ How happy is the man who 
is a great general.” What does he say ? “ Oh, the 

happinesses of the man whose transgression is for¬ 
given, whose sin is covered ” (Ps. 32:1, translated 
literally from the Hebrew). There is no happiness 
like the joy of knowing your sins are all forgiven. 
Oh, what a joy thrills the heart when a man knows 
that his sins are fully, freely and forever forgiven. 
That is one reason why the one who believes on 
Jesus Christ is unspeakably happy, and you can have 
that unspeakable happiness to-day. I do not care 
how black your life may have been in the past; I 
do not care how far you may have wandered from 
God; I do not care how old you may have grown 
in sin; if you take Jesus Christ to-day for your 
Saviour and your Lord, and believe on Him, your 
every sin will be blotted out, and it will be your 
privilege to know it. 

2. In the second place, Those who believe on 
Jesus Christ rejoice with “joy unspeakable and full 
of glory,” because they are free from the most grind¬ 
ing and crushing of all forms of slavery, the slavery 
of sin. There is many a slave in this audience to¬ 
night. Some of you are slaves of strong drink. 
Some of you men and some of you women are slaves 
of drink. You know you are slaves of drink. Some 
of you are slaves of drugs. Some of you are slaves 
of an ungovernable temper. Some of you are slaves 
of impurity of act or impurity of thought. Some of 
you are slaves of other sins. The grossest, vilest, 
most degrading slavery in the universe is the slavery 
of sin. Yes, many of you here to-night are slaves. 


HOW TO BE HAPPY 


91 


But the Lord Jesus says in Jno. 8:31, 32, “If ye 
continue in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; 
and ye shall know the truth,.and the truth shall make 
you free.” He says again in the thirty-sixth verse, 
“If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye'shall 
be free indeed.” There is not a slave in this build¬ 
ing to-night who cannot have his fetters snapped in 
a moment, yes, in a moment, by the mighty Son of 
God, if he will only believe on Him and trust Him 
to do it. How many a man and how many a woman 
I have known, who were once slaves of sin in its 
most degrading and hopeless forms, who are now 
free. 

One of the dearest and most honoured and most 
useful friends I ever had was Sam Hadley of New 
York City. Sam Hadley was once hopelessly en¬ 
slaved by sin. Strong drink had utterly mastered 
him and undermined his character. He had com¬ 
mitted one hundred and thirty-eight forgeries, and 
was being sought for by the police. One night after 
having spent a horrible night the night before, 
locked up in a New York jail with delirium tremens, 
in a mission meeting a few blocks away from the 
jail he cried to Jesus to save him, and Jesus saved 
him right then and there; and I have often heard 
him say that never from that night had he ever had 
the slightest desire for that which had enslaved him 
more than anything else, intoxicating drink. My, 
what a happy man he became! All who knew him 
testified that he had “joy unspeakable and full of 
glory.” I wish you could have looked in Sam 
Hadley’s face and seen the joy that there was in 
that redeemed and radiant countenance. But we do 


92 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


not need to call Sam Hadley back from Heaven to 
testify, for there are hundreds of people right here 
in this building to-night who were once complete 
slaves, who are now God’s free men and free women, 
and who could testify to the fact. That is one rea¬ 
son why we are unspeakably happy, because we are 
free. How the Southern negroes rejoiced when 
they came to understand they were emancipated. 
They shouted and sang, “ Glory! Glory! Halle¬ 
lujah! ” Why? Because they were once slaves, but 
now were free. No wonder then that we rejoice 
with “joy unspeakable and full of glory” because 
we know that we are free, and free forever. 

3. In the third place, Those zvho belie-ve on Jesus 
Christ rejoice with “joy unspeakable and full of 
glory” because they are delivered from all fear. 
There is nothing that more darkens the human heart 
and robs it of all joy and fills it with gloom than 
fear in some of its myriad forms. Those who truly 
believe on Jesus Christ are saved from all fear. 
They are delivered from all fear of misfortune; they 
are delivered from all fear of man; they are deliv¬ 
ered from all fear of death; they are delivered from 
all fear of eternity. Do you know, friends, that to 
a true believer in Jesus Christ “ Eternity ” is one of 
the sweetest words in the English language? Oh, 
how it makes our hearts swell, that word, “ Eter¬ 
nity.” But “ Eternity ” is not a sweet word to the 
unsaved. Write these words, “ Where will you 
spend eternity ? ” on a card and hand it to a man 
who is not a Christian, and they will make him mad; 
write these same words, “ Where will you spend 
eternity ? ” on a card and hand it to a Christian, 


HOW TO BE HAPPY 


93 


and they will make him glad. Why is it? Simply 
because a true believer on Jesus Christ is not afraid 
of but delights in thoughts of eternity. Why, to the 
one who believes on Jesus Christ eternity is glory. 

4. In the fourth place, The one who believes on 
Jesus Christ rejoices with “joy unspeakable and full 
of glory ” because he knows he will live forever. Is 
not that something to rejoice over? Is it not won¬ 
derful? We read in I Jno. 2:17, “The world 
passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth 
the will of God abideth forever.” We all know 
that it is true that “ the world passeth away.” We 
certainly ought to know it by this time; but it is 
equally true that, “ He that doeth the will of God 
abideth forever.” Sometimes as we ride along our 
beautiful roads we see the stately mansions of our 
multi-millionaires, and the thought will come to one 
sometimes, “ It must be very pleasant to live there.” 
Well, I suppose it must be, but think a moment. 
How long will these people live there? The father 
of the household may perhaps live there ten years, 
possibly twenty years. Then where does he live? 
Some of the children may live there twenty, thirty, 
possibly forty years, then what? The grave. I tell 
you it is not worth much after all. But the Chris¬ 
tian looks on, and on, and on, to a life that has no 
end, to a life that is eternal. Glory! 

5. In the fifth place, Those who truly believe on 
Jesus Christ “rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable 
and full of glory ” because they know they are chil¬ 
dren of God. It is a great thing to know that you 
are a child of God. How does the Christian know it? 
He knows it because God says so in Jno. 1:12, “ As 


94 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


many as received him, to them gave he the right to 
become children of God, even to them that believe 
on his name/’ A child of God! think of it! Some¬ 
times as I have travelled around the world someone 
has pointed out to me some man, and said, “ That 
man is the son of such and such a man, naming some 
king. Would you not like to be the son of a great 
king? Just look at that young man. He is the son 
of a king.” In one country many years ago, when 
the king business was better than it is to-day, I was 
taken up and introduced to the son of one of the 
reigning monarchs of Europe, and the man who in¬ 
troduced me whispered to me, “ He is the son of so 
and so” (naming the king). Well, what of it? He 
was a fine man in himself, but what if he was the 
son of a king? I am a son of God, and that is far 
greater, and every believer in Jesus Christ in this 
building to-night is a child of God, the child of “ the 
King of kings.” And any one of you here to-night, 
if you are not already a child of God, can become 
one in an instant, by receiving the Lord Jesus. 

6 . In the sixth place, and very closely connected 
with the last, True believers in Jesus Christ rejoice 
with “ joy unspeakable and full of glory ” because 
they are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus 
Christ. Is that not wonderful? We are so familiar 
with it we do not stop to take in the meaning of it. 
One of England’s dukes once lay dying. He called 
his brother to him, the one who would succeed to 
the title, and said, “ Brother, in a few hours now 
you will be a duke and—and I will be a king.” He 
was already a child of the King and in a few hours 
he himself would be a king. I, too, will be a king 


HOW TO BE HAPPY 


95 


in a few days. You may say, “It may be many 
years.” Well, many years are only a few days on 
the scale of eternity. And, if you really are a be¬ 
liever in Christ Jesus, if you have a real living faith 
in Him, you, too, will be a king in a few days. 
There was never a royal pageant sweeping through 
the streets of London at any coronation comparable 
in glory to the glory that awaits you and me just 
over yonder. “ When Christ, who is our life, shall 
be manifested, then shall we also with him be mani¬ 
fested in glory” (Col. 3:3). We may be poor 
to-day. That does not matter. This life will be 
over in a moment and the other life begun, and that 
life is eternal. 

7. In the seventh place, Those zvho truly believe 
on Jesus Christ, those who throw their hearts wide 
open to Him, those who surrender absolutely to Him, 
rejoice with “ joy unspeakable and full of glory ” be¬ 
cause God gives them the Holy Spirit, and there is 
no other joy in the present life like the joy of the 
Holy Spirit. One Monday morning, in Chicago, my 
front door-bell rang. I kept Monday in those days 
for my rest day, and had a notice above the door 
bell, “ Mr. Torrey does not see anyone on Monday.” 
The maid went to the door, and there stood a poor 
woman. The maid said, “ Mr. Torrey does not see 
anyone on Monday. Did you not see the notice 
over the door-bell ? ” She said, “ I knew that, but 
I have got to see him and you just go and tell him 
a member of his church must see him.” So the 
maid brought her into the reception room. She was 
a washerwoman. The maid showed the washer¬ 
woman a seat and came upstairs and said to me, 


96 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


“ There is a woman downstairs who is a member of 
your church and says she has got to see you.” So 
down I walked. As I entered the room she arose 
and hurried toward me, and said, “ Mr. Torrey, I 
knew you did not see anybody on Monday, but I 
had to see you. Last night after I went to bed I 
was filled with the Holy Spirit right there in my 
bed, and I was so happy I could not sleep all night, 
and this morning I had to come and tell somebody. 
I could not afford to give up a day’s work to come 
around and tell you about it, but I knew I must tell 
somebody and I did not know anybody I would so 
like to tell as you. I know you won’t be angry.” 
Indeed I was not angry. I was glad she came, and 
rejoiced with her, that old washerwoman filled with 
the Holy Spirit and so full of joy that, poor as she 
was, she had to give up a day’s work to go and tell 
somebody she loved all about it. 

Before I came to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ 
I was one of the bluest men that ever lived. I 
would sit down by the hour and brood. I have 
never known what the blues mean since the day I 
really became a Christian, absolutely surrendered to 
God. I have had troubles. I have had losses. 
There have been times in my life when I have lost 
pretty much everything the world holds dear. I 
know what it is to have a wife and four children, 
and to lose everything of a financial kind I had in 
the world, and not know from meal to meal where 
the next meal was coming from. I was absolutely 
without resources, living from hand to mouth,—from 
God’s hand to my mouth. I have known what it is 
to be with a wife and child in a foreign country 


HOW TO BE HAPPY 


97 


where they spoke a strange language, and for some 
reason or other supplies did not come, and I did not 
know anyone in the city well enough to turn to them 
for help; but I did not worry. I knew it was all 
in God’s hands, that it would all come out right 
somehow, and of course it did come out right. The 
first time I ever visited London, thirty-nine years 
ago last September, I was planning to spend two 
weeks in England, and then start for America. I 
expected to find money waiting for me when I 
reached London, and I reached London with a wife 
and child, and not a letter, and no money. But I 
said, “ the letter and the money will come to-morrow 
or the next day.” My wife went and made some 
purchases, taking it for granted we would have 
money when the purchases came home; but the 
money did not come. Day after day passed, and the 
dresses came home and it was about time for the 
landlady to come with her board bill. It came to be 
the very last day before our boat started, and not 
a penny in sight. I went down to the bank. I did 
not know a soul in London. There were three or 
four million people there then; a stranger amid three 
or four millions of people, money absolutely gone, 
three thousand miles from friends. I did not worry. 
I knew the money would come. I did not know how 
it would come, for the source I expected to receive 
it from seemed utterly cut off; but yet I was happy. 
Why ? Because I was a child of God; I had the 
promises of the Bible; I knew they were absolutely 
sure. I never lost an hour’s sleep. I never worried. 
I just trusted. It seemed as though I would have 
to be fed somewhat as Elijah was, but I knew I 


98 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


would be fed. I knew my wife and child would be 
provided for. The money came and I sailed on the 
steamer I expected to sail by, with every penny due 
paid, and money in my pocket. Friends, a Christian 
is happy at all times and under all circumstances. 
We rejoice with “joy unspeakable and full of 
glory ” every one of the twenty-four hours of the 
day that we are awake, and sometimes in our sleep. 
You, too, can have that joy. 

II. How to Get This Joy That is Unspeakable 

and Full of Glory 

Now arises the question, “ What must anyone 
here to-night who has not this “ joy unspeakable and 
full of glory” do to get it? I have really answered 
that question several times in what I have already 
said, but to be sure that we all really understand it, 
let me answer it again, or rather let my text answer 
it, “ On whom, though now ye see him not, yet 
believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and 
full of glory.” The text tells us that the way to 
obtain this “joy unspeakable and full of glory,” the 
way to be unspeakably happy at all times and under 
all circumstances, is just by believing on the unseen 
Christ Jesus. What does it mean to believe on 
Jesus Christ? There is no mystery at all about that. 
It simply means to put confidence in Jesus Christ as 
what He claims to be and what He offers Himself 
to be to us, to put confidence in Him as the One 
who died in our place, the One who bore our sins 
in His own body on the cross, and to trust God to 
forgive us all our sins because Jesus Christ died in 
our place; to put confidence in Him as the One who 


HOW TO BE HAPPY 


99 


was raised from the dead and who now has “ all 
power in heaven and on earth,” and therefore is able 
to keep us day by day, and give us victory over sin, 
and to trust this risen Christ to give us victory over 
sin day by day; and to put confidence in Him as our 
absolute Lord and Master, and therefore to surren¬ 
der our thoughts and wills and lives entirely to His 
control, believing everything He says, even though 
every scholar on earth denies it, obeying everything 
He commands, whatever it may cost; and to put 
confidence in Him as our Divine Lord, and confess 
Him as Lord before the world, and worship and 
adore Him. It is wonderful the joy that comes to 
the one who thus believes on Jesus Christ. But 
one must really believe on Jesus Christ to have 
this joy. 

Merely being a member of a church is not enough. 
Merely being baptized is not enough. Merely being 
confirmed is not enough. Merely reading your Bible 
is not enough. Merely reading the Prayer Book is 
not enough. Merely going to church is not enough. 
Merely going to the Lord’s table and partaking of 
the Lord’s Supper is not enough. But if you are a 
real believer on Jesus Christ, if you have put all 
your trust in the Lord Jesus as your atoning Saviour 
and your risen Saviour, and your risen Lord and 
Master, and surrendered your thoughts and life to 
Him utterly as your Lord and Master, and are con¬ 
fessing Him as such before the world, if you have 
thrown your heart’s door wide open for the Lord 
Jesus to come in, and live, and rule, and reign there, 
you will have “ joy unspeakable and full of glory ” 
at all times and under all circumstances. 


100 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


All anyone has to do then, to be unspeakably 
happy at all times and under all circumstances, is to 
believe on Jesus Christ. It does not make any dif¬ 
ference what his circumstances may be: he may be 
rich or he may be poor; he may be highly educated, 
or he may be ignorant; he may be in good health or 
he may be a hopeless invalid; he may have been a 
moral, clean, upright man, or he may have been the 
vilest of sinners, it matters not. Everyone who be¬ 
lieves on the unseen but living Christ will find “ joy 
unspeakable and full of glory.” I can bring scores, 
hundreds, thousands of witnesses to prove that. 
You cannot bring a single witness on the other side. 
Col. Robert Ingersoll delighted to say, “ It does not 
make one happy to be a Christian.” How did he 
know? He never tried it. You can search the 
earth through and you cannot find me one single man 
or woman who was ever an out and out believer in 
Jesus Christ, a real whole-hearted believer in Jesus 
Christ, one who had surrendered all to Jesus Christ; 
I say you cannot find me even one such man or 
woman who will deny that Jesus Christ gives “joy 
unspeakable and full of glory ” to those who thus 
believe on Him. Here, then, is the way the case 
stands: Every single competent witness, that is, 
every witness who has ever tried it, testifies that 
believing on Jesus Christ does bring “ joy unspeak¬ 
able and full of glory,” and these witnesses number 
thousands, tens of thousands and hundreds of thou¬ 
sands, people from every rank of society and culture, 
and not one witness on the other side. Is it demon¬ 
strated or not? It certainly is. 

I take it that I am speaking to-night to reasonable 


HOW TO BE HAPPY 


101 


men and women. You desire “joy unspeakable and 
full of glory.” I have told you how to get it. There 
can be no doubt about it. The evidence is over¬ 
whelmingly convincing. There is then but one ra¬ 
tional thing for you to do, believe on Jesus Christ 
to-night. Will you do it? 

There came to me once, a man who was utterly 
miserable. He was a rarely gifted man, a brilliant 
scholar, but utterly miserable. If ever I saw a man 
in hell he was the man. He had attempted suicide 
at least four times. He had been so near succeed¬ 
ing in his attempts that on two occasions it had been 
necessary to pump out of him the poison he had 
taken and thus bring him back to life. I urged him 
to believe on Jesus Christ. He replied, “ I cannot, 
I have sinned away the Day of Grace.” Day after 
day I talked with the man and I never had but one 
message, and that was, “ Come to Jesus Christ. Be¬ 
lieve on Jesus Christ.” At last one day the man 
did come to Jesus Christ. He found “ joy unspeak¬ 
able and full of glory.” I have seen that man some¬ 
times when his face was radiant. Out of hell into 
heaven by just believing on Jesus Christ. Will you 
take that same step to-night? 



VII 


IS THERE ANY MAN OR WOMAN IN THIS 
CITY WHOM THE LORD JESUS CAN¬ 
NOT SAVE AND FILL WITH 
RADIANT JOY? 

“He is able." —Hebrews 7:25. 



'Y subject is: Is there a man or woman in 
this city whom the Lord Jesus cannot save 
“ and fill with radiant joy? There is not. 
But that is merely my assertion, and I do not ask 
anybody to take anything on my mere say-so. I 
am going to prove conclusively to every one of you 
to-night the truth of my assertion. I am going to 
prove so conclusively that there is not a man or 
woman in this city whom Jesus Christ cannot save 
and fill with radiant joy, that if any of you go out 
of this auditorium to-night unsaved or with a heavy 
heart it will be your own fault. I am not going to 
prove it by merely quoting from the Bible. That 
would be enough; for the proof that the Bible is 
God’s sure Word, is overwhelming, to anybody who 
really wishes to know the truth. But I am going 
to prove it by what mine own eyes have seen. By 
present-day facts that are unquestionably and dem¬ 
onstrably facts. But before I give you my text 
and my argument I wish to tell you about three peo¬ 
ple with whom I have dealt personally. The first 
was a woman, apparently a most desperate and hope¬ 
less case. She had killed a man, and in addition to 

102 




CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


103 


all that was a professional murderess of infants. 
But that was not all. She had come one night to 
hear me preach and was brought under deep con¬ 
viction of sin, and had called at my office the next 
day and told me her story and I had dealt with her. 
But the devil was not willing to let her go so easily, 
and she resisted her convictions. She was not will¬ 
ing to yield to Jesus Christ. One afternoon she 
came to me at the close of my Bible class, with a 
hard look on her face, and with one of the most ter¬ 
rible mocking laughs I ever heard she said, “ Mr. 
Torrey, you cannot trouble me any more with your 
preaching or your teaching. I admit that you did 
trouble me. I admit that my conscience was deeply 
stirred, but I have prayed to the devil to take away 
my convictions and he has done it.” “ Ha! Ha! ” 
she said with a hard, steely look in her eyes and an 
evil look upon her face, “ you cannot trouble me any 
more. I have prayed to the devil and he has taken 
away all my convictions.” As I recall it, all that I 
said in reply was, “ Well, you are the greatest fool 
I have ever known.” And she went away. But I 
prayed for her. 

The second person was a man, a drunken shoe¬ 
maker. He had tried to kill his wife when he was 
drunk and his wife had fled with their child and 
was in hiding. My private secretary had put her 
in a place of safety. The man came to me and said, 
“Mr. Torrey, do you know where my wife is?” I 
replied, “ I do.” He said, “ Tell me where she is.” 
I said, “ I will not. You are not fit to have a wife. 
You tried to kill your wife last Saturday night. I 
will not tell you where she is.” He said, “ If you 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


104 

do not tell me where she is I will kill myself.” 
“No,” I said, “you will not kill yourself. You do 
not dare, you are a coward. Moreover, if you do 
kill yourself you will go to hell,” and with that I dis¬ 
missed him. But he kept coming to see me. He 
got under what he called “deep conviction of sin ” 
and would come around for me to pray with him, 
and I would pray with him. He would cry to God 
to save him from the drink. The tears would roll 
down his cheeks, and then he would ask me for a 
nickel or a dime to go down to Pullman to get a 
job, and I knew the money all went for whiskey. 
He kept this up for several years. He would not 
only strike me for money but struck the students 
also. I suppose he got hundreds of dollars out of 
the students. He would cry and whine and snivel 
and the tears would roll down his cheeks. He would 
profess repentance, then strike somebody for money 
and go off and get drunk; and he kept that game up 
for years. 

The third person was a man, a very gifted man, 
said to be the most brilliant Greek scholar and most 
brilliant scholar in some other lines that one of our 
well-known universities had turned out for many 
years. But the man had gone against his conscience 
in many things until he was in a morbid state of 
mind bordering on insanity. He had attempted sui¬ 
cide at least five times. Morphine or other drugs had 
been pumped out of him two or three times. He was 
sent to me from Ohio to Chicago under guard lest he 
kill himself on the way. The man who brought him 
led him in to me and introduced him, then said, 
“May I go now?” I said, “Yes, leave him with 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


105 


me.” The man sank down and glared at me and 
said, “ I am possessed of the devil.” I said, “ I 
think you are. But Jesus Christ came to cast out 
demons.” “ No,” he said, “ that is not what I mean. 
I mean the devil has entered into me as he did into 
Judas Iscariot.” I said, “ That may be true, but 
Jesus Christ is stronger than the devil.” He said, 
“ I have committed the unpardonable sin.” I said, 
“ Jesus Christ says, 4 Him that cometh to me I will 
in no wise cast out/ ” He said, “ I have no desire 
to come to Him.” I said, “ He does not say that 
if anyone has a desire to come to Him, He will in 
no wise cast him out, He says, * Him that cometh 
to me I will in no wise cast out/ ” The conversa¬ 
tion went on in that way for some time, and then I 
sent him to a room. For many long months scenes 
like this were repeated. At times at night, after the 
meetings, I would take him to our home three miles 
away, on the front end of the car through a wild 
blizzard, hoping to cool him down. At other times 
in the middle of the night I would hear somebody 
creeping up the stairs toward my door on the third 
floor, and I knew it was this man. 

These three persons seemed to me at the time the 
three most hopeless cases I had ever met, and so 
one day I said to God, “ Oh, God, if Thou wilt give 
me these three persons, if Thou wilt let me see these 
three persons clearly saved, I will never despair of 
another person as long as I live.” And God gave 
me to see every one of these three persons saved 
and filled with radiant joy. Years have passed, 
more than twenty-five years, and they have all stood 
fast. Almost every time I pass through Chicago, if 


106 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


I speak anywhere in the city, this woman who had 
prayed to the devil, and who had stained her hands 
with human blood and had been guilty of infant 
murder, hears of it and is in my audience, and comes 
to me at the close with happy, radiant face and tells 
me how God is using her to lead others to Christ. 
There are people in this audience to-night who I 
think know her but they do not know her history. 
I have never told it to a human being in a way that 
they could tell who it was. The second person, the 
man who tried to kill his wife, and for years worked 
Christian workers by prayer and weeping and got 
money out of them to squander in drink; to-day that 
man is a very active and happy member of the 
Moody church, with a happy wife and a son now 
grown to manhood. Many know his history and the 
details of it. The whole family often come up to 
me when I go to Chicago, and all of them wreathed 
with smiles. When I held a Union Meeting of the 
churches of Chicago years afterward he was one of 
my most faithful ushers. The third person is known 
by many here who have heard him teach the Word 
of God with mighty power in Chicago, and Toronto, 
and St. Louis, and Detroit, and in many other cities 
in America and across the Pacific in China. Do 
you wonder after three such experiences as this, and 
I could relate many more, some of which might seem 
to some of you more wonderful than any of these, 
that I never despair of anyone and have an unshak¬ 
able confidence that there is not a man or woman in 
Los Angeles or anywhere else whom the Lord Jesus 
Christ, the Omnipotent Son of God, cannot save and 
fill with radiant joy? 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


107 


Now for my text. It consists of but three words, 
three short words. There are but eight letters in 
the whole text. You will find these three short 
words in Heb. 7:25, “He is able/’ The whole 
verse is a great verse and sums up in a wonderful 
way what the mighty Jesus, the risen Son of God, 
is able to do. Let me quote it, “ Wherefore he is 
able also to save them to the uttermost that come 
unto God by (through) him, seeing he ever liveth 
to make intercession for them.” But I wish to con¬ 
centrate your attention to-night on these three words, 
“ He is abler 

I. What Jesus is Able To Do 

Let us look first at what the Lord Jesus is able 
to do. Let us look at some of the tremendously im¬ 
portant specific things that He is able to do. The 
verse from which my text is taken sums up what 
He is able to do in four wonderful words, “save to 
the uttermost Not merely from the uttermost, we 
shall see before we get through that He is able to 
do that, but the verse teaches far more than that. 
It says that “ He is able to save to the uttermost/ f 
The Greek words so translated mean “ unto entire 
completeness,” or “ unto entire perfectness.” But I 
wish to-night to call your attention to some of the 
wonderful details that are included in that striking 
general statement “ unto the uttermost ” or “ unto 
entire perfectness.” 

1. First of all, The Lord Jesus is able to forgive 
sins. That was His claim when He was here upon 
earth. He said of Himself, “ The Son of man hath 


.108 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


power on earth to forgive sins ” (Mark 2:10). He 
is able to forgive any sin and all sins. He Himself 
tells us that there is but one unpardonable sin, the 
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (Matt. 12:31, 
32), i. e., the deliberately attributing to the devil 
what you know to be the work of the Holy Spirit 
And it is evident from our Lord’s words about it 
compared with other words He spoke that the only 
reason that this sin is unpardonable is because the 
people who commit this sin are so hardened and de¬ 
termined in sin that they will not repent, and have 
no desire to repent. So, if anyone here has any de¬ 
sire to repent and be forgiven, it proves conclusively 
that you have not committed this one unpardonable 
sin. Absolutely every other sin the Lord Jesus can 
forgive and will forgive, if the sinner meets the one 
condition of forgiveness, simply putting his trust for 
forgiveness in the Lord Jesus. 

How do we know that the Lord Jesus is able to 
forgive sins ? Because He said He had “ authority 
on earth to forgive sins,” and proved on the spot 
that He had that authority which He claimed, and 
furthermore God set the stamp of His own endorse¬ 
ment on this wonderful claim of Christ Jesus, and 
upon all of His claims, by raising Him from the 
dead. His resurrection from the dead is the best 
proven fact of history. The proof of it is abso¬ 
lutely overwhelming. But that is not all, thousands 
upon thousands of living witnesses to-day bear wit¬ 
ness to the fact that they know that the Lord Jesus 
has forgiven their sins. My own sins were very 
many and very great, and I know that the Lord 
Jesus has forgiven every one of them. 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


109 


Let me tell you of one instance, though not more 
notable than many of which I have had personal 
knowledge. Years ago there was in New York City 
a young woman of about twenty-five. She had been 
sold into a life of sin by her own mother at the age 
of eleven, and not only that, though a white girl, she 
was sold to a negro. She lived this awful life in the 
vilest slums of New York until she was about 
twenty-five years of age. A friend of mine saw her 
one night stagger up from an underground den of 
infamy in the Pell Street District in New York. 
She leaned against a lamp post, and in her misery 
groaned. My friend stepped up to her and told her 
of the Lord Jesus Christ and His power to save. 
He sent her to a place where she would be sheltered 
and looked after. He led her to a definite accept¬ 
ance of Jesus Christ. Her life was marvelously 
transformed, her every sin was blotted out. From 
being one of the vilest of the vile in New York she 
became a remarkably beautiful Christian character. 
One day she stood on the public platform in the 
Cooper Institute in New York, and with the tears 
running down her cheeks, and the cheeks of her 
audience, plead with wonderful power with three 
thousand people to accept Jesus Christ. Her pre¬ 
vious life had broken her health. She lived only 
about two years after her conversion, but they were 
wonderful years. The night she died the man who 
had led her to Christ called to see her in the home 
where he had had her sheltered. As he entered the 
room the smile of Heaven was upon her face. A 
large picture of his daughter, who had died at four 
years of age, hung at the foot of the dying slum 


110 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


girl’s bed. She looked at her benefactor and said, 
“ Uncle Charlie, I shall soon see Florence.” Then a 
brighter light came into her face and she said, 
“ Uncle Charlie, in a few minutes I shall see Jesus.” 
And she departed to be with the King. Can anyone 
question then that Jesus Christ has power on earth 
to-day to forgive sins, to forgive all sins, to wash 
the record of the vilest sinner on earth as white as 
snow? 

2. In the second place, The Lord Jesus is able 
to save from sin's power. He is able to save any 
man from sin’s power, no matter how completely he 
is fettered or how hopelessly he is straining in his 
own strength to throw off the shackles of sin. How 
do we know that? First of all because the Lord 
Jesus Himself says so. He says, in Jno. 8:34, 
“ Verily, verily, I say unto you, Everyone that com- 
mitteth sin is the hand-servant (slave) of sin.” Now 
we all know that is true, we all know that it is true 
with all of us. We have personal experience of the 
fact. But two verses farther down our Lord says, 
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall 
be free indeed” (Jno. 8:36). 

But our Lord Jesus not only claimed when He 
was here on earth that He could save from the 
power of sin and Satan any man who would put his 
trust in Him, but He also proved it. No one ever 
came to Him for deliverance from the power of sin 
but he got it. And Jesus Christ is proving to-day 
that He has power on earth to-day to deliver any 
man from the power of sin. Miracles of deliverance 
from sin’s power are just as common to-day as they 
were when Jesus our Lord walked upon this earth. 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


Ill 


Indeed they are more common than they were then; 
for then He was in His humiliation, now He is in 
His resurrection glory and power (Jno. 14:12). 

I wanted to tell you of some instances that had 
come under my personal observation, but so many 
came surging into my mind I had difficulty in decid¬ 
ing which to tell. There was “ Billy the Boozer ” in 
Cardiff, Wales, and “ Bob ” in Glasgow, Scotland, 
who sent to'the platform a defiant letter, saying that 
he was in the gallery, and that Jesus Christ could 
not save him, and that when he died and went to 
hell the devil would resign and appoint him leader 
in his place. Then there was a man in Liverpool, 
and there was a woman in Dublin, who in some re¬ 
spects seemed the most awful woman I ever met. 
She must have been sixty years old, highly educated, 
intimately associated with people whose name is 
known around the world in cultured circles. But I 
will tell you of a man in Minneapolis. He had once 
been up in the world. He had been postmaster in his 
home town. But he had gone down through drink 
until he was separated from wife and children and 
mother and all friends. He drifted to Minneapolis, 
became a beer slinger in the lowest saloon in the 
city, “ the Jumbo saloon,” but became so bad that 
they kicked him out of there and he was a wanderer 
on the streets. He had one small coin left in his 
pocket, all he had in the world, a ten-cent piece. He 
came down Washington avenue drunk. He came by 
the brilliantly lighted hall where I was speaking and 
thought it was some free-lunch joint. He staggered 
in, his hat on the side of his head, the stub of a 
cigar which he had picked out of the gutter in his 


112 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


mouth. He looked confusedly around the room. A 
lady stepped up to him and courteously asked him 
if he would not take off his hat and hand her the 
stub of his cigar, which she laid aside. She brought 
him down to the front of the hall, right near the 
platform, to the only seat she could find vacant. 
The speaker, another man who had been wonderfully 
saved from drink, was telling of the saving power 
of Jesus Christ. This poor down-and-out leered up 
at me and lurched in his chair, and said, “ Do you 
believe that?” referring to the testimony that the 
man was giving. I said, “Yes, I know that what 
this man says is true, and the Lord Jesus can save 
you too.” When the man had finished his testimony 
I said, “Joe, take this man around into my office,” 
back of the platform. After the meeting was over 
he was somewhat sobered, and I led him to Christ. 
He left the building a saved man. The appetite that 
nothing else could break was broken in a moment by 
the power of the risen Christ. He never touched 
another drop of drink. The next day he found 
work peeling potatoes in a cheap restaurant. Soon 
he found better work. Soon he was an employee of 
one of the leading railroads in the northwest. He 
was promoted from position to position. I moved 
to Chicago and took the superintendency of the Bible 
Institute and he was planning to come down and 
prepare for the ministry. But his health broke 
down, and the higher railway officials thought so 
much of him that they sent him down to Missouri 
to a warmer climate, and paid all his expenses for 
months in the hope he might recover. But he 
passed into the glory. After his death his mother. 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


113 


to whom he had been reunited, wrote me telling me 
of his triumphant death, and sent me his picture, 
saying, “you were kind to my boy when he was 
down, and I want you to have this to remember him 
by.” I wrote his story on the back of the picture 
and placed it on the mantelpiece in my office in 
Chicago, and whenever I was tempted to be dis¬ 
couraged I would turn around in my chair and look 
at that noble Christian face looking down upon me 
from the mantelpiece. Yes, Jesus “is able,” able to 
snap the fetters of drink or drugs, or lust or any sin 
of any man or any woman who comes in utter help¬ 
lessness to Him, and puts their trust in Him to set 
them free. 

3. In the third place. Our Lord Jesus is able to 
keep from falling. We read in Jude 24, He “is 
able to. keep you from falling, and to present you 
faultless before the presence of his glory with ex¬ 
ceeding joy.” Thank God that we not only read it 
in Jude 24, but we read it in the experience of thou¬ 
sands of men and women to-day. Our Lord Jesus 
is proving every day that He can keep any man or 
woman, any human being, from falling. I have 
known a multitude of men and women who have 
thought that there was no use for them to try to be 
Christians or to lead a better life because of their 
utter bondage to sin in some form, sometimes in 
many forms. They thought the Lord Himself could 
not keep them from falling, but they were persuaded 
to put their trust in Him and He has kept them from 
falling. Let me tell you of just one. 

It was in Ottawa, Canada. One afternoon there 
came into the meeting a most degraded looking speci- 


114 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


men of humanity. Someone whispered to me that 
he was the champion welterweight pugilist of 
Canada, and an awful drunkard. He was drunk 
that afternoon. Before I began to preach I prayed 
that God would save him. I saw Mr. Jacoby seated 
beside him, and he afterwards dealt with him per¬ 
sonally and led him to Christ. They told me that 
the man was such a desperate character that a saloon¬ 
keeper in Hull, across the river, had hired him to 
stand at the bar and drink with everyone that came 
in who would pay for his drinks. But knowing how 
dangerous he was when drunk, this saloon-keeper 
riveted around his ankle a heavy iron ring, fastened 
to a heavy chain, fastened to a great spike driven 
into the floor. When he professed to accept Christ 
all Ottawa was amazed. But they said he would 
not stand. Bets were made among the members of 
Parliament as to how long he would stand. They 
bet that he would not stand twenty-four hours. But 
he did. Then they bet that he would not stand an¬ 
other twenty-four hours. But he did. Then they 
bet that he would not stand another twenty-four 
hours. But he did. And they gave up betting. That 
man was only one out of a great multitude. I could 
stand here by the hour and tell of slaves of dope, 
of cocaine, of morphine, of chloral, of somnos, and 
of other drugs, slaves of drink, and slaves of the 
gambling mania, and slaves of impurity in every 
known form, and slaves of every sin of which I have 
ever heard, hopeless slaves, despairing slaves, seem¬ 
ingly bound for a hopeless sinner’s grave and an 
eternal hell, who have been set free and have become 
among the finest Christians I have ever known. I 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


115 


am not speculating to-night, I am not guessing, I am 
not theorizing. I am telling you what I know by my 
own personal experience and observation. And on 
the ground of that I tell you that the Lord Jesus 
Christ is able to keep any man or woman in this 
building to-night from falling, if with an honest 
heart you come to Him, putting your trust in Him as 
your crucified Saviour from the guilt of sin and your 
risen Saviour from the power of sin. 

4. In the fourth place. Our Lord Jesus Christ, 
our mighty Divine Saviour, not the Saviour of Uni- 
tarianism, or of Theosophy, or of Christian Science, 
or of New Thought, or of the Higher Criticism, or 
of the New Theology, but the Saviour of this Book, 
the risen Christ Jesus, the very Son of God, is able 
to completely transform the lives of men and women 
who put their trust in Him. This book says, in II 
Cor. 5:17, “ If any man be in Christ, he is a new 
creature (creation): old things are passed away; 
behold, all things are become new.” Yes, this book 
says it, and the experience of countless multitudes 
proves it true. Our Lord Jesus proved in the Bible 
days that He could completely transform men's lives 
by doing it. He transformed, e. g., Saul of Tarsus, 
who had stained his hands with the blood of men 
and women and children, guilty of no other crime 
than that of believing in Jesus Christ, Saul of Tarsus 
who breathed an atmosphere of “ threatenings and 
slaughter,” into Paul the Apostle, Paul, whose heart 
was filled with love instead of hate, whose hands 
were given to saving others instead of slaughtering 
others; Paul who was transformed from being Saul, 
a bigoted Jew, into Paul, a devoted Christian; Paul 


116 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


who instead of seeking the death of others laid down 
his own life to save others. This Paul toward the 
end of his life wrote from what he knew by his own 
experience as well as by inspiration of God, “ This 
is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, 
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sin¬ 
ners; of whom I am chief” (I Tim. 1:15). But 
the still living Lord Jesus, living up yonder in the 
glory, at the right hand of God the Father, is doing 
the same thing to-day right down here on earth. 
Here again a crowd of memories surge before my 
mind. Just one case. 

A boy of German parentage was drunk in Phila¬ 
delphia at nine years of age. At fifteen years of age 
no school could manage him, nor could his father 
and mother. He was a young desperado. He en¬ 
listed in the navy and spent four years in the navy 
during the Civil War. At the end of the Civil War 
he was given a place on the Philadelphia police force, 
but was so full of criminal traits himself that he was 
discharged from the Philadelphia police force, and 
the mayor of the city said he would not put him on 
the force again if he were his own brother. He be¬ 
came a young outlaw in Philadelphia. He joined 
the regular army and was sent west in the Indian 
wars. He was in some desperate encounters, not so 
much with Indians as with desperadoes, and he was 
as desperate and lawless as any of them, and he spent 
most of his time in the guard-house. There was a 
motley company of desperadoes in the guard-house 
at the time, some of the most desperate criminals in 
the land, and they elected him chief of the gang. 
He was dishonourably discharged from the army 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


117 


and became a notorious character. He was ordered 
out of the city of Omaha by the mayor and by the 
chief of police and given only twenty-four hours to 
leave the city, because he had nearly killed the bully 
of Omaha in a fight. He was invited to join the 
Jesse James gang. He went to an Iowa town where, 
because of having considerable money left him by 
his father, he went into business. But he became so 
notoriously bad that when the merchants of the town 
would hear his whoop as he came up the streets at 
night they would turn out the lights in their stores 
and put up the shutters at the windows. The town 
outlawed him, forced him to leave the town and or¬ 
dered him not to come back. But he came back. A 
revival service was then in progress. He went in 
with one of his cronies. When the invitation was 
given out for all that would accept Christ to lift their 
hands he said to the other man, “ You lift your hand 
and I will lift mine.” The other man said to him, 
“ Bill, you lift your hand and I will lift mine.” But 
they were both joking, and ridiculing the meeting. 
But the next night, a man who sat down here in 
front in this church one morning a few weeks ago, 
a prominent lawyer, went to him and said, “ Bill, 
come up to the altar,” and he went. And the Lord 
Jesus met him and saved him, and transformed him 
into the noblest, truest man I ever knew, the truest 
friend I have on earth to-day, the dearest friend out¬ 
side of my own family I ever had. And if anyone 
would ask me who was the most Christlike man I 
ever knew, without hesitation I would say, the Rev. 
William S. Jacoby, who at the age of forty-two 
turned his back upon a notorious career of sin and 


118 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


accepted Jesus Christ. And our risen Lord proved 
His resurrection power by completely transforming 
that life into the likeness of His own. Oh! I know, 
I say I know, not guess, nor think, nor hope, I know 
that our Lord Jesus, our Mighty, Risen, Divine 
Saviour, the Saviour of this man, is able to trans¬ 
form any life from all that is vilest into all that is 
noblest and highest and most divine. 

5. In the fifth place, Our Mighty Lord Jesus is 
able to fill the saddest hearts with the most radiant 
joy. We read in this book, in Ps. 34:5 R. V., 
“ They looked unto him and were radiant ” and we 
read in I Pet. 1:8, “ Though now ye see him not, 
yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and 
full of glory.” These words were written by one 
whose heart was once utterly sad and broken, but was 
now filled “ with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” 
Our Lord Jesus lifts men out of the deepest depths ot 
utter despair to the highest heights of rapturous joy. 
Here again crowds of men and women in inconsol¬ 
able and utter sorrow, whom it has been my privilege 
to introduce to Jesus Christ and see, become among 
the most radiantly happy people I ever knew, pass 
before me. I am tempted to tell you of the one I 
knew best and still know best of all, myself. I know 
what it means to be driven to such desperation by 
heart agony that seemed unendurable that I started 
to end my own life. I have known what it means 
to spring out of bed with a shriek of agony and 
despair in the middle of the night and cower on the 
floor in an agony that was a very hell on earth. In 
years gone by I have said, “ I know that there is a 
hell because I have been there.” But thank God for 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


119 


years and years this glorious Lord Jesus has filled 
my whole soul day and night with a continuous 
rapturous joy, amidst all sorts of trials and perils 
and losses on sea and land, and in pretty nearly 
every corner of the earth. But I will tell of another 
and not myself. 

There was a woman in Cleveland, Ohio, the wife 
of a well-to-do merchant. But financial reverses 
overtook the man and he was forced to give up his 
business, and almost everything he had in the world 
was swept away. He went to Chicago to see if he 
could not get a new start there, leaving his wife, two 
sons and a daughter in Cleveland. He was taken 
sick in Chicago and they telegraphed his wife to 
come on. She hurried to Chicago, reaching there 
late at night, and drove at once to the hospital where 
her husband lay ill, very ill. But by some strange 
misunderstanding they refused to allow her to see 
her husband that night, it being so late, and told her 
to come the next day. When she came early the 
next day he was dead. Money gone, business gone, 
husband gone, home gone. She spent hours in weep¬ 
ing. Her much weeping injured her eyes. Sh'e 
called upon an eye specialist, not knowing that he 
was a Christian Scientist, but supposing him to be 
a regular practitioner. Following his Christian 
Science methods, he assured her that there was no 
serious trouble with her eyes, that they would be all 
right soon. This was the assurance he gave her day 
after day. But her eyes became steadily worse, until 
she finally consulted a real physician. After a care¬ 
ful examination he said, “ Madam, I am forced to 
tell you that there is absolutely no hope of saving 


120 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


your eyesight. If you had come to me sooner your 
eyes could easily have been saved, but you have now 
waited so long it is impossible.” In a short time 
she was totally blind. Money gone, business gone, 
home broken up, husband dead, eyesight gone! A 
woman of culture and refinement left to face the 
world with her three children, no money, no friends, 
no husband, no sight! Is it any wonder that her 
heart was filled with gloom? She came to hear me 
preach in Chicago. She accepted the Lord Jesus 
Christ. Her heart-broken soul was filled with radi¬ 
ant joy. She became a radiantly happy Christian. 
Any prayer-meeting night you could have seen her 
in her place, in her widow’s garments, and with her 
blind eyes, but with a wonderful smile upon her face. 
And oftentimes she would rise and publicly thank 
God for all the losses that had come into her life, 
because through them she was led to the Lord Jesus 
Christ and to find a joy she had never known when 
she had all this world had to give. Years and years 
have passed since. I received a letter from her only 
a short time ago, full of trust and full of longing to 
see others saved and helped. Our Lord Jesus can 
do the same to-night for the saddest-hearted man or 
woman in this room. He can fill and flood your soul 
with the wondrous and perpetual sunshine of His 
grace. He Himself says, “Whosoever drinketh of 
the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; 
but the water that I shall give him shall be in him 
a well of water springing up into everlasting life ” 
(John 4: 14). It is true. Thousands upon thou¬ 
sands can testify to its truth. 

People sometimes say that “religion makes men 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


121 


and women crazy/’ Religion may make men and 
women crazy, some forms of religion. But Jesus 
Christ does not make men crazy. He gives to those 
who receive Him the Holy Spirit, and “ The fruit 
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kind¬ 
ness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control ” (Gal. 
5:22). Are these the things that make men crazy? 
Letting Christ into the heart has saved many men 
and women from insanity. 

How many I have known who were on the verge 
of insanity from sorrow, morbidness and despair, 
whom I have led to Christ, who are radiantly happy 
people to-day. In order to get this fullness of joy 
every Christian must make a full surrender to God. 
There is no fullness of joy to one who tries to serve 
the Lord Jesus Christ with one hand and to keep 
fast hold on the world with the other hand. If we 
keep back anything from Jesus Christ we will not 
get fullness of joy. Are you a professing Christian, 
and have you not fullness of joy? Listen! There 
is something you are keeping back from God. 

6. In the sixth place, Our Lord Jesus Christ is 
able to use in glorious service those whom He saves. 
Our Lord Jesus is able to use the unlikeliest instru¬ 
ment, the man or woman of least promise. This 
book tells us that “ God hath chosen the foolish 
things of the world to confound the wise; and God 
hath chosen the weak things of the world to con¬ 
found the things which are mighty; and base things 
of the world, and things which are despised, hath 
God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring 
to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory 
in his presence” (I Cor. 1:27-29). 


122 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


How well I remember a drunken expressman on 
the streets of Chicago, a Roman Catholic Irishman, 
a worthless wreck but whom a personal worker led 
to accept Jesus Christ as his Saviour. And dear 
Cully became one of the most useful soul-winners in 
Chicago. It was one of the greatest privileges of 
my life to be able to do honour to my Lord, and 
honour to myself, by conducting his funeral services, 
to which multitudes flocked. 

7. In the last place, Our Lord Jesus, the risen, 

mighty Son of God, is able to raise from the dead, 

and to give eternal life to all who put their trust in 

Him in the life that now is. He Himself says, in 

Jno. 6: 39, 40, “ And this is the will of him that sent 

me, that of all that which he hath given me I should 

lose nothing but should raise it up at the last day. 

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone that 

beholdeth the Son, and believeth on him shall have 

eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day ” 

And He says in Jno. 17:2, in that wonderful prayer 

of His the night before His crucifixion, “ Thou gav- 

est ” me “ authority over all flesh, that to all whom 

thou hast given me,” I “ should give eternal life.” 

It is true that the wonderful and glorious work of 

“our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 

2:13, English R. V.) does not end at death. It 

begins there; i. e., the best part of it begins there. 

Oh! the salvation that is limited to this life is not 

worth much. This life is so short. And eternitv is 

•/ 

so long. A brief lifetime of bitter disappointment, 
and sorrow, and loss, and intense and constant suf¬ 
fering, would pay if it would bring us an eternity 
of joy, and victory, and glory. But Jesus Christ 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


123 


brings a whole lifetime of joy, and peace, and power, 
and an eternity also of boundless joy, abounding 
peace, and amazing power and glory hereafter. He 
is indeed “ able to save to the uttermost them that 
come unto God by (through) him.” 

II. For Whom Does Our Lord Jesus Do 

These Things? 

Now let us ask the all-important question, for 
whom does our glorious Lord Jesus do these things 
of which we have been speaking? Whom does He 
“save to the uttermost” and fill with radiant joy 
in the life that now is, and crown with infinite glory 
in the never-ending life that is to come? The ques¬ 
tion can be answered in a few words. Our text 
answers it, and the uniform experience of thousands 
upon thousands of men and women answers it the 
same way. Listen to the text, “ Fie is able to save 
them to the uttermost that come unto God by 
(through) him ” He saves to the uttermost, “ them 
that come unto God through him.” All of them and 
no one else. He will save and fill with radiant joy 
to-night anyone here, any man, woman, or child here, 
who will “ come unto God through Him.” It mat¬ 
ters not who you are. It matters not what you have 
done. It matters not how helpless and hopeless a 
slave you may be of sin in any form. It matters 
not how dark, and sad, and full of foreboding, and 
how despairing your heart may be: come unto God 
through Jesus Christ and He will save you right 
now, and He will fill your heart with radiant joy 
right now. 

What does it mean to “ come unto God through 


124 HOW TO BE SAVED 

Him? ” The answer is simple. God is a Holy God, 
and you and I are sinners. And the only way a sin¬ 
ner can approach a Holy God is on the ground of 
atoning blood, and Jesus Christ has shed His blood 
to atone for our sins, and His blood is the only 
atonement for sins in the whole universe. He has 
“ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having 
become a curse for us ” (Gal. 3:13), i. e., by taking 
our place and bearing our penalty. To come unto 
God through Jesus Christ is for the sinner, acknowl¬ 
edging himself a lost sinner, with no hope in himself 
or in man, but believing what God says about Jesus 
Christ, that He has laid all our sins upon Him, to 
come to God on the ground of this atoning death of 
Jesus Christ, and just trust God to forgive all his 
sins, because Jesus Christ died in his place. There 
is no other way for the sinner to approach God. If 
anyone will not come to God through Jesus Christ 
he cannot come to God at all. The vilest sinner this 
world ever knew who will believe God’s testimony 
about Jesus Christ, and God’s testimony about Him¬ 
self, and take his place as a lost sinner before God, 
and trust God for Jesus Christ’s sake to forgive his 
sins, will find salvation. For “ He is able to save 
them to the uttermost that come unto God through 
Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for 
them.” 

These things that I have been mentioning are some 
of the things that our Lord Jesus is able to do for 
you to-night Will you let Him do them for you? 
Will you come to God “ through Him ” that He may 
do them for you? Will you accept God’s testimony 
about yourself, that you are an utterly lost sinner, 


CANNOT EACH BE SAVED? 


125 


and God’s testimony about Jesus Christ that He has 
borne your sins in His own body on the cross, and 
accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour, your Lord and 
your King? If you will, Jesus Christ, the mighty 
Son of God, will do these things for you that we have 
been mentioning. It rests with each one of you in¬ 
dividually to say whether or not you will have your 
sins forgiven to-night. The Lord Jesus stands by 
your side to-night and says, “ I am able to forgive 
all your sins to-night. Trust me and I will do it.” 
It rests with each one of you individually to say 
whether or not you shall have deliverance from sin’s 
power to-night. The Lord Jesus, the Mighty De¬ 
liverer, stands by your side and says, “ I am able 
to deliver you from the power of every sin.” Ask 
Him to do it, and trust Him to do it. Put your 
trust in Him as your risen Lord and Saviour, who 
has all power in Heaven and on earth, and trust Him 
to set you free from every sin, and He will do it. 
It rests with each one of you individually to say 
whether you shall know the transforming power of 
Jesus Christ in your life to-night, transforming you 
from all that you should not be, but which you are, 
into all which you should be, and which you can 
become by faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ stands 
right by you to-night and says, “ I am able to com¬ 
pletely tranform your life, if you will put it in my 
hands and trust me to do it.” It rests with each 
one of you individually to say whether you will have 
your heart filled with radiant joy or not, to-night. 
Oh, this Mighty Giver of the Holy Spirit, Who be¬ 
comes to each one who receives Him a fountain of 
water springing up every day and every hour unto 


126 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


everlasting life, leans down beside you, holding out 
to you to drink the golden goblet that contains the 
water of life. And if you will put your trust in 
Him as your crucified Saviour, Who bore all your 
sins in His own body on the cross, and your risen 
Saviour, and ask Him, and trust Him to give you 
His Holy Spirit to fill you with radiant joy, He will 
do it. It rests with each one of you individually to 
say whether or not you shall receive the sure guar¬ 
antee of being raised again when you die, and of 
receiving eternal life, and joy that never ends, and 
the hope of infinite power and glory. That Mighty 
One whom God hath appointed to give eternal life 
to those who put their trust in Him, and to raise 
them up at the last day, stands by your side and says, 
“ I will give eternal life and resurrection. Will you 
accept it as a free gift?” And if you will believe 
His word and put your trust in Him, He will give 
you eternal life and you will never perish, and all 
the powers of earth and hell cannot pluck you out 
of His hand (John 10:28, 29). “ He is able!” 

“ He is able! ” “ He is able! ” Will you come to 
Him? Will you put your trust in Him? Will you 
surrender fully to Him? Will you put yourself in 
His hands to do with you as He will? Will you 
come unto God through Jesus Christ? If you do, 
you will get all these things. He will save you to 
the uttermost and fill your heart with radiant joy. 
If you do not there will be for you barrenness and 
bitterness, and sorrow, and emptiness, and despair, 
and spiritual death, and gloom, and agony, and 
gnashing of teeth in impotent rage and sorrow 
throughout all eternity. 


VIII 


THE UNPARDONABLE SIN 

“ Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin 
and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the 
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be for¬ 
given unto men. And whosoever speaketh a zvord 
against the Son of man it shall be forgiven him: but 
whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall 
not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in 
the world to come.” —Matthew 12:31, 32. 

T HIS passage is often regarded as one of the 
darkest and gloomiest in the Bible. Many 
have gone insane, or nearly insane, over this 
passage; or rather, being already diseased in mind, 
their diseased brains have seized upon this passage 
to brood over. But if we look at the passage care¬ 
fully we will see that the passage has its bright side, 
and on its bright side it is one of the most cheering 
utterances that ever fell from the lips of Jesus Christ. 
It tells us plainly and positively that in all the cata¬ 
logue of sins that men or women can commit there 
is only one sin that puts a man or woman beyond 
hope; that there is only one sin that God will not 
and cannot forgive if men repent and turn to Jesus 
Christ, and that sin is one that, as far as my experi¬ 
ence goes, very few men and very few women have 
committed. I have had countless people come to me 

127 


128 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


personally, and write to me from all parts of the 
earth, who thought they had committed this sin, and 
of all these who have come to me or written to 
me, when I came to question them carefully it was 
evident that not one person among them all had com¬ 
mitted this sin. And most of those who have come 
to me thinking they have committed this sin have 
come out into a bright Christian experience, and 
many of them have since become among the brightest 
and most useful Christians I have ever known. Of 
all the men I have ever led to Jesus Christ, the one 
who in many ways has had the largest usefulness of 
all, usefulness not only in America, but in England, 
China and elsewhere as well, was one who was so 
sure that he had committed the unpardonable sin 
that he had attempted suicide five times, had had 
poison pumped out of him several times and his life 
barely saved, and he was sent to me hundreds of 
miles under guard to make sure he got to me, and 
for fear he would commit suicide on the way. 

I. There is Only One Unpardonable Sin 

The first thing that our Lord Jesus makes very 
plain in the words which we have taken for our text, 
is that there is only one unpardonable sin. He says, 
all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven 
unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost 
shall not be forgiven unto men.” Language could 
not make it plainer that in the whole catalogue of 
possible sins there is only one that men can commit 
that makes pardon and salvation impossible. Even 
murder, as desperate and awful a sin as it is, is not 
unpardonable. There have been many men and 


THE UNPARDONABLE SIN 


129 


women who have stained their hands with human 
blood who have afterwards found pardon and eternal 
life, and become among the truest and noblest of 
Christians. I have met quite a number of persons 
who thought that salvation was impossible for them 
because they had taken the life of some fellow-man, 
but our Lord Jesus declares that there is only one 
unpardonable sin, and that unpardonable sin is not 
murder. 

David committed murder, one of the most das¬ 
tardly murders in history, and yet David found par¬ 
don. It was after he had brought upon his own 
soul the guilt of the death of Uriah, his faithful sol¬ 
dier, that he wrote the words, “ Blessed is he whose 
transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 
Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah imputeth not 
iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When 
I kept silence, my bones wasted away through my 
groaning all the day long. For day and night thy 
hand was heavy upon me; my moisture was changed 
as with the drought of summer.” And then he went 
on to say, “ I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and 
mine iniquity did I not hide: I said, I will confess 
my transgressions unto Jehovah; and thou forgavest 
the iniquity of my sin ” (Ps. 32: 1-5). 

Saul of Tarsus, who afterwards became Paul the 
Apostle, was a murderer. He was responsible for 
the death of men, women and children whose only 
fault was that they believed on the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and yet he found pardon. The grossest 
moral impurity is not unpardonable. Moral im¬ 
purity is loathsome, but it is not unpardonable. Our 
Lord declares that there is only one unpardonable sin s 


180 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


and the sin He describes is not moral impurity. I 
once spoke to a man at the close of my Bible class 
in Chicago. I stepped up to him and asked him if 
he were a Christian, and he said, no he was not, 
though he would like to be. I asked him why he 
was not a Christian, and with tears running down 
his face he said that he had committed a sin for 
which there was no pardon. I told him there was 
only one sin for which there was no pardon, and I 
asked him what the sin was that he had committed 
for which he thought there was no pardon. He told 
me what it was, describing it very fully. It was 
gross immorality. When he finished I said, “ The 
Bible nowhere says there is no pardon for that sin.” 
“ But,” he replied, “ I remember my mother read a 
passage in the Bible when I was a boy, that said 
if a man committed that sin he could not. be par¬ 
doned.” “ No,” I said, “ there is no such passage.” 
But he was sure that there was. I racked my brains 
to think what passage he might have in mind, and 
suddenly it flashed upon me, and I said, “ Oh, I think 
I know the passage to which you refer,” and I opened 
my Bible to I Cor. 6:9, 10, and read, “Know ye 
not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the king¬ 
dom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, 
nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor efflminate, nor 
abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor 
covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extor¬ 
tioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” His sin 
was in that dreadful catalogue, and he said, “ That 
is the passage. Doesn’t it say there that the one who 
commits this sin shall not inherit the kingdom of 
God?” I said, “Let me read you the next verse/* 


THE UNPAKDONABLE SIN 


131 


and I read, “ And such were some of you: but ye 
were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were 
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
in the spirit of our God.” “Does it say that?” he 
cried. I said, “ Look at it,” and I put the book in 
his hand and he read, “ And such were some of you: 
but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye 
were justified.” “ Thank God, thank God,” he ex¬ 
claimed. He then and there accepted Christ. A 
few weeks afterward he brought to Chicago the wife 
whom he had deserted in Indianapolis to go off into 
his life of sin. He introduced her and his grown 
daughter to me, and they accepted Christ. He is 
to-day an officer in the Chicago Avenue church, and 
one of the most earnest men in the church. Pro¬ 
fanity and blasphemy are not unpardonable, except 
the one blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. The 
most outrageous and blatant infidelity are not un¬ 
pardonable. Saul of Tarsus, before his conversion, 
was a blasphemer, he was a rank infidel so far as 
Jesus Christ was concerned. So far from believing 
Him to be the Son of God he believed Him to be 
an impostor. He says of himself that before his 
conversion he “was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, 
and injurious,” but that the Lord Jesus had saved 
him, and in view of this he exclaims, “ This is a 
faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that 
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of 
whom I am chief.” 

II. What is the Unpardonable Sin? 

We come then to the question, What is the un¬ 
pardonable sin? 


132 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


1. First of all let me say that the unpardonable 
sin is a definite act. It is not a certain attitude of 
mind; it is an act. It is not a series of actions, 
though it may be the outcome of a series of actions, 
it is one definite act. This is evident from our 
Lord’s words. The same thing is evident from I 
John 5:16, “If any man see his brother sinning a 
sin not unto death, he shall ask, and God will give 
him life for them that sin not unto death. There 
is a sin unto death.” The unpardonable sin, the sin 
unto death, is one definite sin. 

2. Furthermore, the unpardonable sin is a sin of 
which one may know definitely whether he has com¬ 
mitted it or not. A great many fear that they have 
committed the unpardonable sin. They are not sure 
that they have. They are not at all clear as to what 
the one unpardonable sin may be. But the unpar¬ 
donable sin is a sin of such a definite and clearly 
defined character that one may know to a certainty 
whether he has committed it or not. 

3. What is this definite act, what is this one un¬ 
pardonable sin? This definite unpardonable sin our 
Lord Jesus Christ tells us in so many words is 
the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. He says, 
“ Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and 
blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the 
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be for¬ 
given unto men.” And in further explanation He 
says, “And whosoever speaketh a word against the 
Son of man it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever 
speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be for¬ 
given him, neither in this world, neither in the world 
to come.” So it is evident that the one definite un- 


THE UNPABDONABLE SIN 


133 


pardonable sin is the definite blasphemy against the 
Holy Ghost. What is blasphemy against the Holy 
Ghost? The context in which these words are found 
will tell us. The Pharisees had seen the miracles of 
the Lord Jesus Christ; they had seen His works of 
divine power and heard His words of divine grace. 
They had seen in these miracles clear evidence that 
Jesus was a teacher sent from God who spoke the 
very words of God (Jno. 3:2), that He was the 
Messiah, the Christ. They had been unwilling to 
accept Him as such, because of what it would cost 
them to accept Him. They had refused to accept 
or acknowledge Him as the Christ. But the evi¬ 
dence that He was the Christ was so overwhelming 
that at last in their determination not to accept Him 
they had deliberately attributed His works, which 
they knew to be the work of the Holy Ghost, to the 
devil. They had said, as recorded in this very chap¬ 
ter in the immediate connection, “ This fellow doth 
not cast out devils, but by Be-el-ze-bub the prince 
of the devils.” In other words, they had deliber¬ 
ately attributed to the devil what they knew to be 
the work of the Holy Spirit. This then is the un¬ 
pardonable sin , the only unpardonable sin, the de¬ 
liberately ascribing to the devil what you know to 
be the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not merely the 
attributing to the devil what is the work of the Holy 
Ghost, but what you know to be the work of the 
Holy Ghost. Have you committed this sin? Have 
you deliberately attributed to the devil work that 
you know to be the work of the Holy Spirit? You 
reply, “ I have been a great sinner/’ That is not 
my question. Have you definitely attributed to the 


134 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


devil what you know to be the work of the Holy 
Spirit? If not, then you have not committed the 
unpardonable sin, and there is pardon and salvation 
for you to-night if you will turn from your sin, 
whatever it may be, and accept the Lord Jesus Christ. 
“ But,” you say, “ I have sinned against the light; I 
have resisted the Holy Ghost.” That is not the 
point. You may have done all this, but have you 
definitely attributed to the devil what you knew to 
be the work of the Holy Spirit? Many have sinned 
against the light; many have resisted the Holy Ghost. 
I did for years, but thank God I had not blasphemed 
the Holy Ghost; I had not attributed to the devil 
what I knew to be the work of the Holy Spirit, and 
I found pardon and am a saved man to-night. 
“ But,” you will say, “ I have sinned so long I fear 
I have sinned away the day of grace. My heart is 
hard and nothing moves it now. I have no desire 
to repent.” That is not the question. One may do 
all these things, and many have done all these things, 
and yet have turned to Christ and found pardon. 
The question is, have you deliberately and inten¬ 
tionally attributed to the devil what you knew to 
be the work of the Holy Ghost? If you have, you 
have committed the unpardonable sin and there is 
no pardon or hope for you; but if you have not, 
whatever else you may have done you have not com¬ 
mitted the unpardonable sin and there is pardon for 
you to-night, pardon for you and salvation for you 
before you leave this building, if you turn your back 
upon sin and accept the Lord Jesus Christ. There 
is but one unpardonable sin and you have not com¬ 
mitted that, and as I say, if you turn from your 


THE UNPARDONABLE SIN 


135 


other sins, whatever they may be, and turn to God 
and to Christ, even without one bit of feeling, you 
will be saved to-night. The Bible says, “ To him 
(i. e., to Jesus) bear all the prophets witness, that 
through his name every one that believeth on him 
shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43). And 
He says again, that “ as many as received him, to 
them gave he the right to become children of God, 
even to them that believe on his name.” 

III. Why is the Blasphemy Against the Holy 
Ghost Unpardonable? 

There is another important question for us to con¬ 
sider to-night, and that is why the blasphemy against 
the Holy Ghost is unpardonable. 

1. First of all, The blasphemy against the Holy 
Ghost is unpardonable because it indicates such a de¬ 
termined choice of evil that a man's character is 
determined finally and forever in evil. A man will 
not deliberately attribute to the devil what he knows 
to be the work of the Spirit of God unless he has 
settled it finally and forever that he will not accept 
the truth; so the man dooms himself to eternal sin¬ 
fulness and so to eternal punishment. Such a sin 
comes at the end of a course of persistent rejection 
of the truth and persistent rejection of Jesus Christ. 

2. This sin is unpardonable, in the second place, 
because the one who deliberately commits such a sin 
so determines his character that repentance becomes 
impossible. If any man will repent and come to 
Christ he will be saved; for the Lord Jesus Christ 
has declared in the most unmistakable terms, “ Him 
that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out ” (John 


136 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


6:37). But the man who commits this sin has de¬ 
termined that he will not come to Christ, and there¬ 
fore does not come to Christ, and therefore cannot 
.be pardoned. The fact that one is concerned about 
his spiritual condition, the fact that one is troubled 
about his sins, the fact that one desires to come to 
Christ is of itself conclusive proof that one has not 
as yet committed the unpardonable sin. On the 
other hand, all conscious continuance in sin, all de¬ 
liberate refusal to listen to the truth, all deliberate 
refusal to accept the Lord Jesus Christ when you 
know that you ought to accept Him, all turning of 
a deaf ear to the voice of the Holy Spirit, every such 
an act is a step toward the unpardonable sin. This 
was the course of conduct that led the Pharisees of 
our text to commit the unpardonable sin. Before 
their very eyes they had conclusive proof that Jesus 
was what He claimed to be, time and time again they 
were moved to accept Him; but they would not. 
Time and time again they said “ No ” to the voice 
of the Spirit of God, and they had so hardened 
themselves in the rejection of Christ that at last in 
deliberate determination they had attributed His 
words to the devil, and became utterly blinded in 
mind and utterly incapable of repentance. And some 
of you are pursuing exactly the same course to-night. 
Time and time again you have been moved by the 
Holy Spirit to accept Christ; time and time again 
you have said “ No ” to the voice of the Spirit of 
God, and you are trying to say “ No ” to the Spirit 
of God to-night, as He urges upon you the necessity 
of forsaking your sins and accepting Christ. You 
are walking straight toward the unpardonable sin 


THE UNPARDONABLE SIN 


137 


and toward a hopeless and eternal hell. Every one 
of you here to-night who has heard the Gospel be¬ 
fore and refused it, every one of you that knows that 
Jesus Christ is the Son of God and yet refuses to 
accept Him as your Saviour, every one of you who 
has been moved by the Holy Spirit once, twice, three 
times, perhaps more frequently, in the past and have 
said “ No ” every time, every time you say “ No ” 
to the Holy Spirit you are confirming yourself in 
sin, you are bringing yourself more and more surely 
near to the point where you will commit the unpar¬ 
donable sin and your destiny be eternally sealed. 

Some years ago there was a great religious awak¬ 
ening in one of our colleges. Many turned to Christ. 
Two young men were under deep conviction, but 
they would not yield. In their determination not to 
yield they agreed together that on a certain night 
they would meet at the college chapel and go into 
the chapel together and blaspheme the Holy Ghost. 
At the appointed hour they met in front of the 
chapel. The heart of one of them failed him, and 
he repented, turned to the Lord Jesus Christ and 
was saved. The other one went into the chapel 
alone. What he did in there no one but he ever 
knew, but when he came out he was pale as a ghost. 
He went into utter infidelity, became one of the lead¬ 
ers of the infidel society in Chicago, lived many years 
and died as he had lived, and was everlastingly 
lost. 

The Spirit of God is speaking to many of you here 
to-night. He has spoken to you often before. You 
know you ought to accept Christ. You know you 
ought to confess Him. If to-night you say “ No ” 


138 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


to Him again you may so determine yourself in sin 
that repentance will become impossible and you will 
be lost forever. You will be as surely lost for all 
eternity as when you have been in hell ten million 
years. On the other hand, anyone here to-night 
who will accept Christ, no matter what your past 
may have been, no matter how grossly you may have 
sinned, no matter how frightful your sins may have 
been, no matter how long you have sinned, if you 
will come to Christ to-night there is pardon, salva¬ 
tion, and eternal life for you. Will you yield and 
accept Jesus Christ right now? 


IX 


THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST, GOD’S SON, 
CLEANSETH FROM ALL SIN 

“If we zvalk in the light, as he is in the light, we 
have fellowship one with another, and the blood of 
Jesus his son cleanseth us from all sin .”— I John 
1:7. 

O NE week ago to-night we saw that Jesus is 
the Christ, the Son of God. To-night we 
shall see that the blood of Jesus, whom we 
saw last Sunday night to be the Son of God, 
cleanseth from every trace of sin certain persons, 
and we shall see also how we ourselves can become 
such persons as are cleansed from every trace of sin 
by the blood of Christ Jesus. 

I. How We Know that the Blood of Jesus 
Cleanses From All Sin 
The first question that confronts us to-night is, 
How do we know that the blood of Jesus cleanseth 
from every trace of sin? 

1. First of all, We know that the blood of Jesus 
cleanses from every trace of sin because the Bible 
says so, and we have seen on former occasions that 
the whole Bible is the Word of God, and that there¬ 
fore everything it says is indubitably and unquali¬ 
fiedly; true. I have no hesitation in believing without 

139 


140 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


any qualification or abatement or discount or attempt 
at a spiritualizing and vaporizing evasion of its plain 
meaning everything this book says, or to be more 
exact and definite, everything that God, “ who can¬ 
not lie,” says in this book. Now here in our text 
we read what God says, not what John says, but 
what God says, “ The blood of Jesus his son cleans - 
eth us from all sin.” 

Practically the same thought is found in Eph. 1:7, 
“ We have our redemption through his blood, the 
forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of his 
grace.” God here tells us through Paul that the be¬ 
liever in Jesus Christ has “ redemption,” i. e., “ the 
forgiveness of his sins,” through the blood of Jesus 
Christ. Forgiveness of sin is not something the be¬ 
liever in Christ is to get at some time in the future 
when he has gone through purgatory or when he 
has struggled long and successfully against his sin¬ 
ful tendencies and against his temptations, or when 
he comes to die, or when the Lord Jesus comes 
back again: forgiveness of sins is something the 
believer in Jesus Christ gets because of the atoning 
sacrifice of the blood of Christ the moment he ac¬ 
cepts as his own personal Saviour that Jesus Christ 
who made perfect atonement for his sins on the cross 
of Calvary, and surrenders to Him as his Lord and 
Master and confesses Him as such before the world. 
Forgiveness of sin is something anyone in this audi¬ 
ence to-night can get right here now, so that he may 
know that every sin he ever committed, or ever shall 
commit, every sin great or small, the blackest sin 
that any man or woman ever could commit, and the 
smallest sin he ever did commit, is blotted out of 


THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST 141 


God’s book and out of God’s remembrance concern¬ 
ing him forever. Oh, precious Gospel! and greatly 
needed Gospel, needed by every one of us, needed 
by you fine women, who smugly admire your own 
immaculate virtue, as truly as by the woman upon 
whom you would scarcely deign to wipe your feet 
because of her disgusting vileness and indescribable 
shame; needed by you Nathaniels, “ Israelites indeed 
in whom is no guile,” as truly as by the publican 
who smites upon his breast and cries, “ God be merci¬ 
ful to me the sinner—the consummate sinner.” 

The same thought is found in Rom. 5:9, “ Being 
now justified by (in) his blood” God here tells us 
through Paul that every believer in Christ is “ now 
justified ”—not is going to be justified at some future 
time when he gets wholly sanctified or gets through 
purgatory, or when he dies and gets to Heaven, but 
is justified the moment he believes. Justified means 
more than forgiven, it means reckoned righteous. 
The whole verse means that God not only forgives, 
i. e., dismisses from His memory, every sin the be¬ 
liever in Christ has ever committed, but that fur¬ 
thermore He puts to the believer’s account, because 
of the shed blood of Christ, the perfect propitiation 
for the believer’s sin (Rom. 3:25, 26), all his own 
absolutely perfect righteousness as exhibited in the 
life of Jesus Christ, God manifested in the flesh. Or 
as Paul puts it in another place (II Cor. 5:21), 
“ Him who knew no sin God made to be sin on our 
behalf; that we might become the righteousness of 
God in him.” When Jesus the Son of God shed His 
blood on the cross and thus made a perfect “ pro¬ 
pitiation for our sins” (I Jno. 2:2), a propitiation 


142 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


perfectly acceptable to God, He took our proper 
place of curse and condemnation and rejection be¬ 
fore God, and the moment we take Him we step into 
His place of perfect acceptance before God, and God 
looks at us, no matter how vile we may have been, 
through Him and sees us covered all over from head 
to foot with His own perfect and glorious righteous¬ 
ness. If the vilest woman in Los Angeles should 
come in here to-night and accept Jesus Christ as her 
personal Saviour, and surrender to Him as her Lord 
and Master, and confess Him as such before the 
world, the moment she did it every sin she had ever 
committed would he blotted out and she would he 
as perfect in her standing before God as the purest 
woman in this room. Some years ago I was preach¬ 
ing one Sunday morning in the Moody Church in 
Chicago on Rom. 8: i, “There is therefore now no 
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus/’ and 
I made this remark, “If the vilest woman in Chicago 
should come into the Chicago Avenue church this 
morning and should here and now accept Jesus Christ 
as her Saviour, the moment she did it every sin she 
ever committed would be blotted out and her record 
would be as white in God’s sight as that of the purest 
woman in the room.” Unknown to me, one of the 
members of my congregation had gone out that very 
morning to one of the lowest dens of infamy in the 
city and sought out a woman, an utter outcast, and 
invited her to come to the church to hear me preach. 
But the woman replied, “ Church is not for the likes 
of me. I would not be welcome at church.” To which 
the woman replied, “ You would be welcome at our 
church,” which, thank God, was true. But the 


THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST 143 


woman said, “ No, church is not for the likes of me.” 
Then the pure woman said, “If you will go with 
me I will go with you.” “ No,” the woman who 
was a sinner said, “ that would never do. The police 
know me, and the boys on the streets know me and 
sometimes throw stones at me, and if they should 
see you going up the street with me they would think 
you were just such as I am.” But the woman who 
was a saint said, “ I don't care what they think about 
me; if you will go with me I will go with you.” 
But the woman would not consent. At last they 
agreed on this, that the woman who was a saint 
would walk a few steps ahead and the woman who 
was a sinner would come a few steps behind. So 
on they came, block after block, up LaSalle avenue, 
the woman who was a saint a few steps ahead and 
the woman who was a sinner a few steps behind. 
At last they reached the Moody Church. The woman 
who was a saint ascended the stairs, entered the audi¬ 
torium and took a seat. The woman who was a 
sinner followed, timidly pushed open the door, saw 
one vacant seat in the last row under the gallery and 
slipped into it. She had scarcely taken her seat when 
I made the statement which I have just quoted, “ If 
the vilest woman in Chicago should come into the 
Chicago Avenue church this morning and should 
here and now accept Jesus Christ as her Saviour, 
the moment she did it every sin she ever committed 
would be blotted out and her record would be as 
white in God’s sight as that of the purest woman in 
this room.” My words went floating down over the 
heads of the audience and dropped down into the 
heart of this woman who was a sinner, in the last 


144 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


seat underneath the gallery. She saw Jesus hanging 
on the cross in her place, put her trust in Him, and 
God then and there forgave her and put to her ac¬ 
count all the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and 
when the meeting was over she came down the aisle 
weeping, to meet me and to thank me for what God 
had done for her that morning. 

2. In the second place, We know that the blood 
of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin by experience, 
by the experience of thousands. Thousands upon 
thousands of sinners, some of them among the wick¬ 
edest men and women that ever walked this earth, 
among others Paul, who said, and who rightfully 
said, that he was “ the chief ” of sinners, because 
he had stained his hands with the blood of a multi¬ 
tude of men, women and children whose only crime 
was that they obeyed and confessed their rightful 
Lord Jesus Christ (I Tim. 1:15-17), I say there 
are thousands upon thousands of sinners, including 
many of the worst this sinful world has ever known, 
who testify that the blood of Jesus Christ has 
cleansed them from all sin, and that the Holy Spirit 
to-day is bearing witness together with their spirit 
that they are children of God (Rom. 8: 16). 

If there is anything absolutely sure in this old 
world, so full of doubt and uncertainty, it is that the 
blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin. Let subtle and 
self-satisfied infidels and theologians go and specu¬ 
late and split hairs to their heart’s content as to what 
is philosophical and what is not, what is possible 
and what is not, what is God’s Word and what is 
not God’s Word, but this fact, not theological or 
philosophical speculation but fact, stands absolutely 


THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST 145 

and eternally sure, that “the blood of Jesus his son 
cleanseth from all sin.” That is not something I 
guess but something I'know. I know it because God 
says so, and He “cannot lie,” and I know it also 
by blessed personal experience. Years ago I pumped 
my head full of a lot of evolutionary and other un¬ 
proven and senseless philosophy, but even that was 
not able to drown out what I knew, that the blood 
of Jesus had cleansed me from all sin. Praise God! 

II. Just What Does the Bible Mean When It 
Says the Blood of Jesus Cleanseth 
Us From All Sin? 

Now we come to the second question, Just what 
does the Bible mean when it says that “ the blood 
of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”? The 
Bible makes that also clear as day. One of the 
many wonderful things about this wonderful Book 
of God is that it interprets its own statements in an 
unmistakable way, and therefore does not leave us at 
the mercy of priests or popes or any unconverted 
and unregenerated and sin-blinded theologians, 
Protestant or Roman Catholic, to get our interpreta¬ 
tions from them. That is the kind of theologians 
that that subtle old enemy the devil has succeeded 
in packing some of our theological seminaries with 
in this day. What then does the Bible mean when 
it says that “the blood of Jesus his son cleanseth 
us from all sin ”? To be more specific, does it mean 
that the blood of Jesus cleanses believers from the 
guilt their sins bring upon the sinner, or does it mean 
that the blood of Jesus cleanses the believer from the 
very presence of sin itself? I say that the Bible it- 


.146 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


self answers these questions in the most unmistak¬ 
able terms. If you will take your Bible and your 
concordance and look up every passage in the Bible 
where the word “ cleanse ” is used in connection with 
the word “ blood ” you will find that in every in¬ 
stance, CLEANSING BY BLOOD IS CLEANSING FROM 
guilt. We of course have not time to read all the 
passages to-night, for they are very many, but if you 
will come to me at the close of this meeting I will 
tell you where to find them and you can hunt them 
up for yourself and be convinced. (Lev. 16:30, 
17:11; 14:19, 31; Jer. 33:8; Fsa. 51:7; Rev. 1:5; 
Rev. 7:14; Heb. 9: 22, 23; Eph. 1:7; Rom. 3:25; 
Rom. 5:9; Matt. 26:28.) 

The thought then of our text interpreted in the 
light of the uniform and unvarying teaching of the 
Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, is that 
all who “ walk in the light ” are cleansed continu¬ 
ously (the present tense of cleanse is used, denoting 
continuous action), cleansed every day and every 
hour and every minute, from all the guilt of sin , 
there is not one spot or trace of sin upon them in 
God's reckoning. There is absolutely no sin upon 
them, not one smallest speck. There may be still in 
moments of weakness and failure sin in their con¬ 
duct, but there is not one smallest sin upon them in 
God’s reckoning, it has all been settled, atoned for 
and washed away forever by the atoning blood of 
Christ, shed on Calvary’s accursed tree. It is not 
the blood of the crucified Jesus, but the indwelling 
life of the risen Jesus that saves from the power of 
sin, and it will be the completely transforming 
power of the returning Lord Jesus, Who will make 


THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST 147 


us just like Himself when He comes again (I John 
3:1, 2, that will save us from the very presence of 
sin. But to-night, right now, any man, woman or 
child, no matter how long you may have continued 
in sin or how deeply you may have gone into sin, 
can be cleansed from every trace of guilt and become 
as absolutely sinless in God's reckoning as Jesus 
Christ Himself is, you can become 

Near, so very near to God, 

Nearer I cannot be; 

For in the person of His Son, 

I’m just as near as He. 

Dear, so very dear to God, 

Dearer I cannot be; 

For in the person of His Son, 

I am just as dear as He. 

III. Who Is It That the Blood of Jesus 

Cleanses From All Sin? 

Now there is just one more question, and it is 
one of great practical importance for us to answer, 
or rather for us to get God's answer to, and that is, 
Who is it that the blood of Jesus cleanses from all 
sin? The text answers this question also. Listen. 
“If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we 
have fellowship one with another, and the blood of 
Jesus, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” 

I. First, please notice the word “us,” “cleanseth 
us from all sin.” Who are meant by the “us”? 
God Himself answers the question in the fifth chap¬ 
ter and the thirteenth verse of this same book: 
“ These things have I written unto you , . . . even 
unto you that believe on the name of the Son of 
God.” The “ us ” then are those who “ believe on 


148 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


the name of the Son of God.” But what does it 
mean to “believe on the name of the Son of God ”? 
Again we are not left to our own speculations and 
guesses but God Himself answers this question in 
John i: 12, “As many as received him to them gave 
he the right to become children of God, even to 
them that believe on his name ” It is then those who 
receive Jesus who “believe on the name of the Son 
of God,” i. e., those who take Him to be to them¬ 
selves what He offers Himself to be to everyone and 
anyone, take Him to themselves to be their personal 
Saviour by having borne their sins in His own body 
on the cross, and trust God to forgive them because 
Jesus died in their place, take Him to themselves as 
their Lord and King to whom they surrender the 
entire control of their thoughts and lives. Anyone 
who thus takes or receives Jesus, believes on Him as 
the Son of God, and the blood of Jesus cleanses them 
from all sin. 

2. In the second place, notice just zvhat is said 
in the verse which we have taken for our text, “If 
we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have 
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus 
His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” What does it 
mean to “ walk in the light ”? The truth is light, 
error is darkness. The truth revealed in this book 
is light, God is light (verse 5), Jesus Himself is the 
Light of the World (John 8: 12). To walk in the 
light is therefore to walk in obedience to the truth, 
to walk as He whom we have accepted as our Lord 
and Master and risen Saviour bids us walk and em¬ 
powers us to walk, to walk in the light is to walk 
in open confession of Christ, in obedience to His 


THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST 149 


will as He reveals it in His Word, to walk just as 
everyone who really believes on His name (and not 
merely professes to believe on His name) will 
walk. 

If anyone here to-night, no matter what you have 
been in the past, even though you have been the 
vilest moral leper, or thug, or gunman, or the most 
outrageous infidel or blasphemer, or anything else, if 
any man, woman or child of you will right here and 
now accept Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour, 
as the One Who bore all your sins in His own body 
on the cross, and trust God to forgive you because 
Jesus died in your place, and if you will surrender 
to Him as your Lord and King and confess Him as 
such to-night, and go out of here to prove the reality 
of your faith by walking in the light (walking as He 
bids you walk) as you certainly will walk if you really 
accept Him as your crucified and risen Saviour, the 
instant you do this the blood of Jesus, not your re¬ 
pentance nor your good conduct, nor even your faith, 
but “ the blood of Jesus ” will cleanse you from all 
sin and keep cleansing you to all eternity. But if 
you do not thus accept Jesus the Christ as your per¬ 
sonal Saviour and surrender to Him as your Lord 
and King, and confess Him as such, you will go out 
of here to-night utterly defiled by the guilt of your 
awful sins, far more awful in the sight of a holy 
God than you think, and to be defiled and dishon¬ 
oured and accursed by the guilt of these sins forever 
and ever. 

Will you accept Him now? 


X 


PATHS TO PERDITION 

“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the 
gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruc¬ 
tion, and many there be which go in thereat: because 
strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that 
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it .”— 
Matthew 7:13, 14. 

T HERE are juist two classes of people in this 
audience, those who are in the narrow road 
that leadeth to life, and those who are in 
some one of the many paths that make up the one 
broad road that leadeth to perdition, “eternal perdi¬ 
tion” Some people say “ let us go with the crowd.” 
Well, if you go with the crowd you will go to hell. 
Listen again to the words of Jesus Christ, “ Enter 
ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and 
broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and 
many there be which go in thereat: because strait 
is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto 
life, and few there be that find it ” (Matt. 7:13, 14). 

A fool tries to avoid danger by shutting his eyes 
to it. That is the method by which modem Uni- 
versalists and modern infidels try to escape hell, by 
shutting their eyes to it or by denying its existence. 
A wise man avoids danger by opening his eyes wide 
to it and getting out of the paths that lead to it, 

150 


PATHS TO PERDITION 


151 


That is the method I shall advocate from this plat¬ 
form to-night. I tarn sometimes said to be “ a man 
without mercy,” or “ a man without a sweet and 
forgiving nature,” because I tell you plainly your 
peril. Friends, I do not want around me any of 
those wonderfully merciful people who reveal their 
“ sweet and forgiving nature ” by throwing sand 
into my eyes and trying to make me think I am safe 
when I am in grave and imminent peril. The man 
who points out my sins and my peril is my best 
friend and my kindest friend. The man who flat¬ 
ters and deceives me is my worst foe and my 
cruellest foe. Delilah coddled Samson while she 
bound him for his foes. That is what these so-called 
“ liberal minded preachers ” are doing. God forbid 
that for the sake of popularity I should join them in 
their damnable work of destroying unwary souls. 

I shall therefore point out to you to-night with 
great plainness of speech some of the paths that lead 
to perdition, in the hope that at least some of you 
who are walking in these paths will get out of them 
before you leave this building. 

I. Suicide 

The shortest path to perdition, the straightest and 
quickest road there, is suicide . This is the road that 
Judas Iscariot took and the Bible tells us that he 
went “to his own place” (Acts 1:25). If anyone 
wants to be in perdition in a few hours let him take 
an overdose of morphine or bichloride of mercury, 
if he wants to be there in a few minutes let him 
take carbolic acid, if he wants to be there in a second 
let him blow his brains out. There is absolutely no 


152 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


hope hereafter for a suicide, unless he is insane and 
therefore irresponsible for his foolish and wicked 
act. I do not know how many men and women 
have told me that they intended committing suicide. 
To every such an one I have said, “ You will go to 
hell if you do.” I have not a doubt that my words 
were true. To anyone in this audience to-night who 
is being swept away by the epidemic of suicide that 
is engulfing us, and who is contemplating “ solving 
the mystery of eternity ” in that way, I wish to say 
to-night, that that is the shortest and swiftest road 
to hell known to man, and there is no getting out of 
hell after you once get in. A man once came to 
me in Chicago in great mental anguish. He told me 
that it seemed as if he must end his life. I told him 
plainly what would be the certain consequence if he 
did, and then pointed out to him a better way, the 
way of faith in Jesus Christ. A short time after¬ 
ward I met that man again. His countenance was 
radiant. He had found rest in Jesus Christ. 

II. Impurity 

Impurity is sweeping more men and women and 
boys and girls into perdition in this city than any 
other sin. Intemperance claims but a small fraction 
of as many victims as impurity. The spread of im¬ 
purity in our land, because of the war and because 
of the movies and because of the breaking down of 
parental restraint at home, and of sound moral 
teaching and discipline in our schools, and because 
of the general outbreak of lawlessness in all depart¬ 
ments of our modern life, and especially because of 
the sowing of the seeds of infidelity in schools, col- 


PATHS TO PERDITION 


153 


leges, and even in Sunday Schools and churches and 
everywhere else, is simply appalling. The things I 
have personally known about the impurity in young 
and old, and in all classes of society, have made my 
heart sick and faint. I know some things about 
many of you in this audience to-night that you do 
not think I know. Some I know by your very looks, 
you bear the marks of your sin in your eyes, in your 
faces, in your gait and in your manner. Some things 
I know by direct testimony. Much of our Los An¬ 
geles life is festering with the sin of Sodom. Sins 
of impurity in their various forms are a swift and 
sure road to perdition. Impurity leads to perdition 
in many ways: 

i. First of all, Impurity breeds unbelief in God, 
and in Christ and in the Bible. I have found by 
personal investigation that very much of the unbe¬ 
lief of our day has its origin in impurity of life. 
Let me give you an illustrative example. A young 
student came to me and said that he was sceptical. 
I asked, “Why are you sceptical?” He replied that 
he had been reading philosophy and the study of 
philosophy had made him sceptical. Then I said, 
“Is your life right?” He hesitated. I followed it 
up, “ Are you not living in sin ? ”, and I named the 
sin I had in mind. He made a clean breast of it. 
-He was. I told him to quit his sin and then do cer¬ 
tain other things and he would find his scepticism 
would take to itself wings and fly away. He prom¬ 
ised to do it. Some months passed. This young 
man came to me again and I said to him, “ Where 
do you stand now?” “Just where I did,” he re¬ 
plied. I asked, “ Why have you not gotten over 


154 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


your scepticism?” “I do not know,” he said. 
“Have you given up your sin as you promised to 
do?” He dropped his head and answered, “No.” 
“ Well,” I said, “ give up your sin and you will get 
rid of your scepticism. That’s your trouble.” He 
dropped his head lower and said, “ I guess it is.” 
Yes it was, and it is the trouble with a good many 
of you men and women here to-night who flatter 
yourselves your trouble is scepticism. No, with 
many of you the real trouble is not scepticism, it is 
simply disgusting impurity of life. I say that in all 
kindness and for your own good. If I have hit you, 
do not get angry at me; for I am your friend. Get 
angry at yourself, for you are your own worst 
enemy. Get angry at yourself and quit your sin. 

Professor W. W. White was once lecturing in 
Chicago on infidelity. A fine-looking, gray-haired 
man, a man with a bright mind, came up at the close 
of his lecture and said something like this, “ You are 
a Christian and I am an infidel. I am just as sin¬ 
cere as you are, and you have no right to tell me 
I am not.” “Is your life pure?”, Professor White 
inquired in reply. “Just as pure as yours,” the man 
replied. “ Have you any objection to giving me 
your name?”. Professor White inquired, “I want to 
look up your record.” The man began to edge away 
and refused, saying that his name was none of Pro¬ 
fessor White’s business. But Professor White se¬ 
cured his name from some one in the crowd; for 
he was one of the best known infidels in Chicago, 
indeed one of the best known infidels in America. 
In less than a year this gifted infidel was found dead 
in a Boston hotel side by side with a brilliant young 


PATHS TO PERDITION 


155 


woman (not his wife), whom he had led astray, 
first into infidelity and then into adultery. Impurity 
makes more infidels than all the infidel books that 
were ever written. Mind you, I do not say all scep¬ 
tics and infidels are impure. God forbid! But I do 
say that impurity makes many infidels. Now you 
know whether you are impure or not. If you are, 
and are also an infidel or sceptic, give up your sin 
and see how quickly you get rid of your soul- 
destroying infidelity. 

2. But impurity sends men and women to perdi¬ 
tion in still another way. It entangles people in re¬ 
lations that it is hard to get out of, and that one 
cannot remain in and he saved. How many a poor, 
blinded fool of a man has become infatuated with 
some other man’s wife and run away with her, and 
then waked up some day to see that both he and she 
were in hell now and on the way to an eternal hell 
hereafter. But what could he do? The man who 
trifles with another man’s wife (or trifles with an¬ 
other woman while he has a wife of his own) is 
not only one of the vilest, most scoundrelly, most 
contemptible, and abject sneaks and villains that 
walk the face of God’s earth, but he is also one of 
the most arrant fools. 

I dealt personally one night with a bright, intel¬ 
ligent young man. He was under deep conviction 
of sin. He told me he wanted to come to Christ. 
“ Well then why don’t you come? ” I asked. No an¬ 
swer. Then I looked steadily at him and his story 
lay revealed. “ Is there a woman in the case?” I 
asked. “Yes.” “Will you give her up?” There 
was an awful struggle, a long struggle, but finally 


156 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


he shook his head and walked out to his companion 
in sin and to hell. 

Hell will be crowded with adulterers and adulter¬ 
esses. Hell will be more full of adulterers and adul¬ 
teresses than Reno, Nevada. Some of you men 
here to-night may well tremble. I am not going to 
point you out, but God knows you. Oh! I appeal 
to every man and woman here to-night who is tak¬ 
ing their first steps in the path of impurity; yes, to 
you who have gotten further on in that road; yes, 
to you who are way down that road: Repent, Re¬ 
pent, Repent, and believe in Jesus Christ to-night. 
If you do, this will be the happiest night you 
ever saw. 


III. The Love of Money 

The next path to perdition is, the love of money. 
God says in I Tim. 6:9, “They that desire to be 
rich fall into a temptation and a snare, and many 
foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in de¬ 
struction and perdition.” How many there are in 
Los Angeles who are taking this road to hell. Go 
out any of our finest avenues, how many saved men 
are there upon it? Very few. Why? Their money 
keeps them from Christ. 

But the rich are not the only ones " who desire 
to be rich.” Many people in very moderate circum¬ 
stances are as eager to be rich as the multi-million¬ 
aire, only they have not been so successful in acquir¬ 
ing wealth. The love of money sends men to perdi¬ 
tion in a variety of ways: 

1. In the first place, The love of money leads to 
dishonest methods of acquiring money. A great 


PATHS TO PERDITION 


157 


many business methods of the present day are simply 
legalized robbery. There are a great many rich men 
who if they were genuinely converted would have to 
pay back most of their money to the persons from 
whom they have stolen it. Some try to get around 
this by giving away a part of their stealings to 
churches, to colleges, to hospitals, to public libraries, 
to various Christian organizations, and to the poor. 
This may soothe their own consciences, but it will 
not satisfy God and it will not keep them out of 
hell. 

2. Again, the consuming love for money blinds 
many men to the fact that there is anything worth 
striving for but money; so they leave their souls and 
their eternal interests utterly neglected. The average 
lover of money is seldom seen inside a church. 
There is a great deal more hope of awakening a man 
besotted with whiskey to the fact that he has a soul 
to save than there is of awakening to that fact a man 
besotted with the love of money. I would a great 
deal rather undertake the job of bringing a rum- 
soaked man to Christ than of bringing a money- 
soaked man to Christ. 

3. Then again, many who love money when they 
are awakened to the fact that they have a soul and 
that it is lost, will not come to Christ for fear they 
will have to give their money up, if they do. A man 
once came to Dr. McArthur of New York and said, 
“ Dr. McArthur, must I give up my money if I be¬ 
come a Christian ?” Dr. McArthur replied wisely, 
saying, “ If you become a Christian and Jesus Christ 
tells you to give up your money you must be ready 
to give it up, every penny of it, if Jesus Christ tells 


158 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


you to.” The man answered, “ I will take a week 
to think about it.” At the end of the week he came 
back and said, “ Dr. McArthur, I have settled it. I 
will hold on to my money till death, and if Christ 
and Heaven must go, they must go.” You may say 
that man was a great fool. I grant it ,* but there are 
many others like him, some of them right here in 
this audience to-night. 

IV. Love of Pleasure 

Love of pleasure is another path to perdition . 
Many people in this audience to-night are rejecting 
Christ Jesus because they think that an acceptance 
of Christ would involve their giving up many pleas¬ 
ures of which they are extremely fond, and very 
likely it would. Many young people are saying, “ I 
don’t think a person can be a real Christian and 
dance or go to the theatre or to the movies or play 
cards.” Well, I admit I think there is a good deal 
of truth in what they say. “ Well, then,” they say, 
“ I will hold on to my dancing, or theatre, or movies 
(or whatever it may be), and let Jesus Christ go.” 
They would rather dance to hell than walk with a 
glad, Spirit-filled heart to Heaven. Alas, poor 
fools! 

When I was holding meetings in Nashville, Ten¬ 
nessee, there were four ladies’ colleges in that city, 
and a great many of the students came to the meet¬ 
ings. I think all but three of the young women who 
were not already Christians in one of the colleges 
accepted Christ at those meetings, and all but two in 
another, and I think every one in another. A large 
section of the Reimer Auditorium was reserved for 


PATHS TO PERDITION 


159 


them each night. One night one of the colleges had 
a very large group of students present in a body in 
one of the galleries, to the left of the platform. 
When I gave out the invitation, a very large number 
of those young women rose and afterwards made a 
public confession of their acceptance of Christ. But 
one prominent young woman, one of the great social 
leaders of the college, said after she got back to the 
college, “ If I can’t escape hell without giving up 
my dancing, then I choose to go to hell.” It was an 
awful thing to say and you never put it as bluntly 
as that, but some of you are acting on that principle. 
I am glad to say that within a short time that young 
woman changed her mind, and accepted Christ, and 
became one of the great leaders in the work. I hope 
that some of you to-night will be equally sensible 
and change your minds. 

V. Infidelity 

Infidelity is another path to perdition. There is 
no hope for the infidel unless he gives up his infidel¬ 
ity. God tells us plainly in II Thess. 1:7-9, that 
“ The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven 
with the angels of his power in flaming fire, render¬ 
ing vengeance to them that know not God and to 
them that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus: 
who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruc¬ 
tion, from the face of the Lord and from the glory 
of his might.” And the Lord Jesus Himself says, 
in Mark 16:15, 16, “ Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the gospel to the whole creation. He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that 
disbeiieveth shall be condemned.” And we read 


160 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


again in Jno. 3:36, “ He that believeth on the Son 
hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the 
Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth 
on hinl. ,, There is not the slightest chance for an 
infidel. But you say, “ I cannot help being an in¬ 
fidel.” Yes you can. If you will come to me, I 
will show you how to help it. If you are really in 
earnest, I will show you a w~ay, a way that will com¬ 
mend itself to your own reason and conscience, out 
of infidelity into faith. I have shown it to many 
infidels and it has never failed yet. 

One of the passages I just quoted, II Thess. 

I • 7- 9 j tells us that it is not only the agnostic and 
infidel who is on the road to perdition, but also, that 
all that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus: 

. . . shall suffer punishment, even eternal de¬ 

struction from the face of the Lord and from the 
glory of his might.” There are many who in their 
intellectual opinion about God and the Bible and 
Jesus Christ are perfectly sound, but who still are 
“ unbelievers ” in the Bible sense of “ unbelief,” and 
every form of unbelief is a path to perdition. They 
do not “obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus,” and 
therefore by the plain declaration of God’s Word 
are on the road to “ everlasting destruction.” What 
does it mean to “ obey the gospel of our Lord 
Jesus ”? The Greek word translated “ obey ” in this 
passage means first of all “ to listen ” or “ to 
hearken,” and then it means to do what is the re¬ 
sult of really listening to a command, to “ obey it.” 
So to “ obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” 
means to listen to the gospel, believe what it says and 
do what it commands. What does the gospel say? 


PATHS TO PERDITION 


161 


Paul tells us in I Cor. 15: 1-4. He says, “Now I 
make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I 
have preached unto you. . . . For I delivered 

unto ^ou first of all that which I also received; that 
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; 
and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised 
up the third day according to the Scriptures” That 
then is “the gospel” (or, good news). The gospel 
says: first, that “Jesus Christ died for our sins,” 
believe that, believe that Jesus Christ died for your 
sins; and trust God to forgive you because Jesus 
Christ died in your place. The gospel says : second, 
that “Jesus Christ was raised from the dead,” be¬ 
lieve that; and trust this risen Saviour, Who has all 
power in Heaven and on earth, to deliver you from 
the power of sin. So much as to what to believe. 
Then do what the gospel tells you to do, confess 
Jesus Christ before the world. As this same Paul 
puts it in Rom. 10:9, 10, “If thou shalt confess 
with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in 
thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou 
shalt be saved: for with the heart man believeth 
unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession 
is made unto salvation;” and also confess your renun¬ 
ciation of >sin and your acceptance of Christ as your 
personal Saviour, by being baptized in His name. 
The refusal or neglect to obey the gospel, by 

NOT BELIEVING WHAT IT SAYS AND BY NOT DOING 
WHAT IT COMMANDS, LEADS TO CERTAIN PERDITION. 

This same thought is found in another of the pas¬ 
sages just quoted, Jno. 3:36, “He that believeth on 
the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth 


162 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


not the Son shall not see life: but the wrath of God 
abideth on him.” 

IV. Reliance Upon a Mere Profession of 

Religion 

Another path to perdition is, reliance upon a mere 
profession of religion. Jesus Christ Himself makes 
that very plain in the very chapter from which our 
text is taken. In verses twenty-one to twenty-three, 
He says, “ Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, 
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven; but 
he that doeth the will of my father which is in 
Heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, 
Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy 
name cast out demons, and by thy name do many 
wonderful works? And then will I profess unto 
them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that 
work iniquity” (Matt. 7:21-23). 

A man may be a church member and still be on 
the straight road to hell. A man may have his 
name on the church rolls (either Protestant or 
Roman Catholic), he may be a church officer, he 
may be very active in various church enterprises, 
he may be a priest or a preacher; but, if he has not 
been born again, if he has not obeyed the gospel, 
if he has not accepted Christ Jesus as his personal 
Saviour and Lord in such a real way that Christ is 
transforming him into His own image, that man is 
still unsaved and is on the road to perdition and will 
spend eternity there, unless he repents and accepts 
Jesus Christ with a living faith. Oh, you men and 
women who are building your hopes of Heaven on 
the fact that you are members of the Roman Cath- 


PATHS TO PERDITION 


163 


©lie church, or members of the Methodist church, 
or the Episcopal or the Baptist or the Presbyterian 
church, or the Church of the Open Door, or any 
other church, if that is all you have to build upon, 
you are in a path that ends in hell, and you may not 
be very far from your destination. 

VII. Putting Off Your Acceptance of Jesus 

Christ 

Just one more path that leads to perdition, that is, 
putting off your acceptance of Jesus Christ to some 
future time. There are many of you who know that 
the path you are now in leads to perdition and you 
fully intend to get out of that path some time; but 
you say, “ Not just yet, not to-night.” My friend, 
that path of delay is one of the surest roads to hell 
and one of the most crowded. More people go to hell 
by that road than by almost any other. I suppose 
that more people who have sat in days gone by in 
this building but who are in perdition to-night have 
gone by this path of putting off, putting off, putting 
off a decision, than by any other road. If we were 
to go into the world of those who have died without 
Christ, and ask the people who once lived in this 
city how they got to that dark world where they 
now exist, I suppose the great majority would say, 
“ I got here by putting off accepting Jesus Christ.” 
That is what many of you are doing to-night. You 
are saying, “ I will accept Christ some time, but not 
to-night.” Listen to what God says, “ Boast not 
thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a 
day may bring forth” (Prov. 27:1), and again, 
“He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, 


164 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without 
remedy ” (Prov. 29:1). 

An active Christian young man some years ago 
was urging a friend to accept Christ. “ Oh, no,” 
he said, “ I like to go to the theatre, I love to hear 
Nat Goodwin and some other players. I won’t be 
a Christian yet.” The young man urged him to de¬ 
cide for Christ at once, and told his friend that there 
was great peril in delay. In a few days the man 
who refused to accept Christ at once was not at 
his place of business, and the Christian young man 
called on him. There seemed to be nothing very 
serious the matter with him. He had injured his 
leg slightly. And still he put off accepting Christ. 
In a few days the Christian young man was horrified 
to learn that his friend was dead. Delay had done 
its work. Delay had sent another soul to perdition. 
“ Oh,” you say, “ Dr. Torrey, don’t try to frighten 
us.” Listen, I would far rather be frightened into 
Heaven than laughed into hell. 

Let me reason with you, let me talk to you as in¬ 
telligent men and women: Quit right now all 
these paths that lead to perdition and get 

INTO THE NARROW ROAD THAT LEADS TO ETERNAL 

life, right now. Take Jesus Christ to-night. He 
says, and He tells the truth when He says it, “ I am 
the way, the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto 
the Father, but by me ” Jesus Christ is the road and 
He is the only road to salvation and to sonship and 
to eternal life. Will you take that road to-night by 
taking Him ? 


XI 


THERE IS A HELL AND IF YOU DON’T 
LOOK OUT YOU ARE GOING THERE 

“And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, 
pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it is profit¬ 
able for thee that one of thy members should perish, 
and not thy whole body be cast into hell — Mat¬ 
thew 5:29 R. V. 

F OR this address I have five texts. The first 
is quoted above. The second is Matt. 10:28 
R. V., “ Be not afraid of them which kill the 
body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather 
fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body 
in hell ” The third is Matt. 23:33 R. V., “ Ye ser¬ 
pents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape 
the judgment of hell?” The fourth is Matt. 25:41 
R. V., “ Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal 
fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels.” 
The fifth is Matt. 25:46. . . . “ And these shall * 
go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous 
into eternal life.” 

A very large proportion of the men and women 
in America to-day do not really believe that there is 
a real and awful hell. Indeed a very large propor¬ 
tion of the ministers and members of orthodox 
churches to-day do not really believe that there is a 
real and awful hell. I say they do not “really 

165 


166 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


believe ” that there is a real and awful hell. Theo¬ 
retically I presume the vast majority of ministers 
and members of churches do believe that there is a 
hell. That is, if you put to them the question, “ Do 
you believe there is a hell to which the wicked are 
sent after death (or after the return of the Lord 
Jesus),” they would say “yes.” But their belief is 
not a real belief, a belief that grips them, a belief 
that shapes their lives and conduct, a belief the 
meaning of which they realize and that moves them 
to the action that they would put forth if they really 
believed it. There is a vast difference between a 
mere opinion and a real faith. I held the opinion 
that there was a hell long before I really believed 
that there was a hell. And I suppose a very large 
proportion of those who are not professing Chris¬ 
tians hold the opinion that there is a hell of some 
kind in t:he next world, though perhaps not an ever¬ 
lasting hell; but their opinion is not a real faith. It 
has very little if any effect upon their conduct. This 
widespread loss of belief in a future hell of long 
and awful sorrow, pain, anguish, remorse, and de¬ 
spair, is responsible for very much of the terrible 
evils that are sweeping over our land at the present 
time. The loss of belief in such a future hell is re¬ 
sponsible for the appalling increase of suicide. If 
men and women believed that every man or woman 
who committed suicide (unless they were insane and 
therefore irresponsible) was going to an awful hell, 
an age-long if not everlasting, sorrow, pain, agony, 
anguish and despair, suicide would cease, instead of 
increasing at the appalling rate it has increased the 
last year. However great their sorrow in the present 


THERE IS A HELL 


167 


life they would not jump from a lifelong frying pan 
into an “ everlasting fire.” Loss of real belief in an 
awful and long, long hell is responsible for all these 
infatuated men and women killing the woman or 
man they love who does not reciprocate that love, 
and then killing themselves. If these men and 
women really believed that such an act meant an 
eternity in hell, not one of them would do it. The 
loss of belief in an awful, eternal hell is responsible 
for every hold-up, burglary, murder, and all this 
frightful crime wave that is -sweeping over this land 
from New York to Los Angeles. If these men and 
women who are unhesitatingly staining their hands 
with blood to get money by open or covert murder 
realized that their action meant an eternity in hell, 
the crime wave would subside into a great calm of 
righteousness in a day. A re-establishment of real 
faith in such a hell as the Bible and Jesus Christ 
plainly teach would do more to lift our land out of 
the awful chaos of crime and terror into which it 
has fallen than all the increase and improvement of 
police forces that can be devised, and all the enact¬ 
ment of more severe and better executed laws that 
can be imagined. The loss of man’s faith in hell is 
responsible for the sickening and appalling increase 
of divorce, of legalized adultery, and the ruin to 
homes and children that comes through it. If men 
and women who seek release from their wives and 
husbands because they tire of them or because of 
incompatibility of temperament, or because they have 
wickedly permitted their affections to be carried cap¬ 
tive by someone else other than their lawful wife or 
husband, if these men and women realized that their 


168 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


violation of the law of God and the demands of de¬ 
cency meant an eternity in hell this intolerable evil 
would cease at once. One of the greatest needs of 
our day is a restoration of real faith in the teaching 
of Jesus Christ concerning hell. If we could get 
men, women and children generally to believe what 
Jesus Christ plainly teaches about hell, there would 
be a general cessation of crime, vice, divorce, suicide, 
and a general turning of men, women and children 
to Jesus Christ as their Saviour and Lord and ex¬ 
ample. I have no expectation of getting men, 
women and children generally to really believe in 
hell, but I do expect to get many of you here to¬ 
night to really believe in hell, and so to get you to 
quit your crimes if you are criminals, as some of 
you very likely are, and to get some of you who are 
living double lives, and are untrue to wife or hus¬ 
band, to quit your vile and damning sin, and to get 
some of you who are contemplating divorce to give 
up the thought of that which is pretty sure to land 
you in an everlasting hell if you do it, and to get 
every one of you who may be contemplating suicide 
to give up this silly, cowardly, and desperate act you 
are planning, an act that will take you to an ever¬ 
lasting hell by lightning express, and I expect to 
lead many of you to accept Jesus Christ as your per¬ 
sonal Saviour, and to surrender to Him as your Lord 
and Master, and to confess Him as such publicly be¬ 
fore the world, which in the last analysfs is the only 
course of action that will save you from spending 
eternity in the “ everlasting fire ” never intended for 
you, but “ prepared for the Devil and his angels,” 
but to which all those who prefer to cast in their lot 


THERE IS A HELL 169 

with the devil rather than to accept Jesus Christ, 
will certainly go. 

I. It Is Certain That There Is a Hell 

The First thought I urish to impress indelibly 
upon your minds, to impress so indelibly and vividly 
upon your minds that it will determine your whole 
future conduct, is that there is a hell, that there is 
not only a hell of suffering and torment of con¬ 
science in the life that now is, as the consequence 
of sin, but that there is an awful hell hereafter, in 
the life which is to come, which is the only sense in 
which Jesus Christ ever speaks of “ hell.” We talk 
of “hell on earth,” but that is only an expressive 
figure of speech, but the real hell, the “ hell ” the 
Bible speaks of, is after the present life is ended. 
It is absolutely certain that there is a hell hereafter. 
Why do I say so? 

I. First of all, It is certain that there is a hell 
beyond the grave waiting vast midtitudes now living 
unless they repent, because Jesus Christ says so. He 
says so in the plainest and most unmistakable lan¬ 
guage in every one of my texts. I have purposely 
taken every one of my texts not from the Bible in 
general but from the words of Jesus Christ Himself. 
It was easy to do this because Jesus Christ has more 
to say about hell than any other person whose words 
are recorded in the New Testament. Jesus Christ 
had more to say about hell than Peter or Paul or 
James or John or Jude, or all of them put together. 
There are two Greek words that are translated hell 
in our Authorized Version. One of them does not 
properly mean “ hell ” at all, but “ Hades,” the abode 


170 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


of departed spirits, the abode of all departed spirits 
both good and bad up to the time of the ascension 
of Jesus Christ, at which time the spirits of the 
righteous dead were taken out of their part of 
Hades, “ Paradise,” up into a heavenly “ Paradise,” 
but the wicked were left in their part of Hades, 
“ Tartarus,” where they will remain until the judg¬ 
ment of the Great White Throne at the end of the 
millennium, when they will be “ cast into the Lake 
of Fire,” the real “ hell.” There is a third Greek 
word, used once in the New Testament, which is 
translated “ hell ” in both Authorized and Revised 
Versions (II Pet. 2:4), but which strictly speaking 
does not mean hell at all, but Tartarus, i. e., that part 
of Hades where the wicked dead, and some of the 
fallen angels, now are, “ reserved unto judgment,” 
after which they, too, will be cast into “ the Lake 
of Fire ” “ prepared for the devil and his angels,” the 
proper hell. Now the Greek word properly trans¬ 
lated “ hell ” is found twelve times in the New 
Testament and in eleven out of those twelve in¬ 
stances it is used by Jesus Christ Himself, and in 
only one instance is it used by anyone else, James. 
Of course hell is spoken of in numerous other pas¬ 
sages where the word is not used; but most of these 
passages also are utterances of Jesus Christ. So to 
preach hell is to be Christlike in your preaching. 
In face of these facts, how utterly silly to say, as 
so many do say in these days, that they are too kind- 
hearted and too full of love of their fellow-man to 
believe in or preach hell. Who was the kindest- 
hearted man that ever walked this earth? Who was 
the most full of love of any man who ever walked 


THERE IS A HELL 


171 


this earth? Beyond a question Jesus Christ, and He 
is the very One who preached hell more than any 
other New Testament writer or speaker. What 
about these men who say it is cruel to preach hell 
and try to impeach the kind-heartedness of John 
Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, because these great 
thinkers, both of them among the greatest thinkers 
the world has ever known, have so faithfully pre¬ 
sented the truth about hell? Whom are you really 
impeaching? You are impeaching Jesus Christ. 
But Jesus Christ’s love of men was of the genuine 
sort: and He proved His love in a more real and 
practical way than by lulling men to sleep with false 
hopes, or by playing to the galleries and winning the 
plaudits of empty-headed men by telling them how 
kindhearted and liberal they are, and telling them 
how good they are, and how they are not sinners, 
but that there is a spark of divinity in them all, and 
that they are in no danger of going to hell, and 
that there isn’t any hell anyway, and that they can 
get drunk, and commit adultery, and divorce their 
wives, and oppress the poor, and live luxuriously, 
and take life easy while others starve, and reject the 
Son of God, and yet somehow come out all right in 
the long run anyhow. Men and women, what do 
you listen to these ministers of the devil masquerad¬ 
ing as ministers of righteousness for anyhow? In 
your heart of hearts you know that they are lying to 
you and lulling you to sleep by false hopes that will 
land you in an eternal hell. No, Jesus Christ showed 
His love, real love, genuine love, not camouflaged 
selfishness, by telling us the truth about hell, and 
then by leaving Heaven with all its glory and com- 


172 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


ing down to earth with all its shame and dying the 
awful death of Calvary, where He bore the awful 
weight of our sins, to save us from going to the hell 
of which He had told us. Listen to Jesus Christ. 
You will if you are not a poor, blinded fool. The 
preacher who declares that there is no hell hereafter, 
or no very awful and long-enduring hell, is the most 
useful servant the devil has in this present dispensa¬ 
tion. He is the devil’s best' servitor. Of course 
Colonel Ingersoll declared often and with great elo¬ 
quence that there was no hell. But no really intel¬ 
ligent and fair-minded man or woman ever took Bob 
Ingersoll seriously. They know he was talking for 
so many hundred dollars a night, and that his pri¬ 
vate morals and private conversation were not of a 
character to give force to his words in public. But 
men do take ministers seriously. Many excellent 
men and women think anything their minister says 
must be so. And often the personal morals and pri¬ 
vate conversation of this class of preachers is so ex¬ 
emplary as to commend their doctrine, and so they 
beguile many and mislead many and encourage many 
to continue in sin and go to hell. Therefore I say 
again, don’t listen to them, listen to Jesus Christ and 
then you are safe. What does Jesu9 Christ say? 

(i.) Listen to my first text, Matt. 5:29: “ And if 
thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out 
and cast it from thee; for it is profitable for thee 
that one of thy members should perish, and not thy 
whole body be cast into hell.” These are the words of 
Jesus Christ and they are from the Sermon on the 
Mount, and I have given you the Revised Version. 
I have taken these words from the Sermon on the 


THERE IS A HELL 


173 


Mount for two reasons. First, because they exactly 
suit my purpose and state in a plain and unmistak¬ 
able way the important truth I am trying to make 
you see and feel. I have taken them from the Ser¬ 
mon on the Mount for a second reason, and that is, 
because pretty much everybody says they believe 
that part of the Bible even though they do not believe 
the rest of the Bible, and these words are taken 
from that part of the Bible which pretty much every¬ 
one professes to believe. I have also taken them 
from the Revised Version for two reasons. In the 
first place, I took them from the Revised Version 
because the Revised Version is a more exact ren¬ 
dering of the original than the Authorized. And I 
have taken them from the Revised Version in the 
second place, because there are many people, includ¬ 
ing some alleged “ scholarly preachers,” who say 
that “ the Revised Version has done away with hell. ,, 
That shows how little they know about the Revised 
Version; there is still plenty of hell left in our texts. 
It is true the Revised Version does translate one 
word “ Hades ” that the Authorized Version trans¬ 
lates “ hell,” and it is abundantly warranted in doing 
so; but where the Lord Jesus really spoke about hell 
we find it in the Revised Version just as strongly 
as in the Authorized Version. Now these words of 
our Lord Jesus Christ clearly teach that there is a 
hell into which men are cast after death, and that 
that hell is so awful that you would better suffer any 
conceivable, lifelong, earthly loss than to go there. 
Now if there is no hell after death, or, if the hell 
after death is not a place of inconceivable agony, 
then the Lord Jesus was either a colossal fool or a 


174 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


shameless liar. If there is no immeasurably awful 
hell after death, then either Jesus Christ thought 
that there was and, therefore, so taught, when there 
was not, in which case He was a colossal fool, or 
else He knew that there was not but taught that 
there was to scare men into doing what He wanted 
them to do, in which case He was a shameless liar 
and stupendous fraud. You cannot deny a hell after 
death of immeasurable agony and horror without 
making Jesus Christ out to have been a colossal fool 
or a shameless liar and stupendous fraud. But 
Jesus Christ was not a colossal fool, He was not a 
shameless liar, and He was not a stupendous fraud. 
He was a teacher sent from God who spoke the very 
words of God, He was the only begotten Son of 
God, He was God manifest in the flesh. That was 
His claim and God Almighty set the stamp of His 
endorsement upon that claim by raising Him from 
the dead. The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ 
from the dead is, as I have shown time and time 
again from this platform, the best proven fact of 
history, and that indisputable fact proves Jesus 
Christ to have been a teacher sent from God who 
spoke the very words of God, and therefore we must 
believe whatever He says, and He says that there 
is a hell after death, a place of conscious torment, 
and its loss and agony are so inconceivably terrible 
that you would better suffer any lifelong loss here 
on earth than go there: and as Jesus Christ says so 
that settles it. 

We know nothing about the future, but what 
Jesus Christ tells us, tells us either directly Himself 
or through His inspired apostles. The wisest man’s 


THERE IS A HELL 


175 


speculations, the greatest philosopher’s speculations, 
about the future are absolutely worthless. You may 
say “ I don’t believe what the Bible says, I think so 
and so.” But your “think so” is not worth the 
breath you waste in telling it. Your opinion about 
either Heaven or hell or about the coming of Christ, 
or about anything else that lies in the future is worth 
no more than the opinion some man has about the 
interior of Africa, who has never been in the interior 
of Africa, nor heard directly or indirectly from 
someone else who had been in the interior of Africa. 
Your opinion is utterly foolish and futile guessing. 
The man we want to hear is the man who has been 
there, the man who knows. Jesus knows. Listen 
to Him. 

(2). Turn to another utterance of Jesus Christ 
on this subject, Matt. 10:28 R. V.: “Be not afraid 
of them which kill the body, but are not able to kill 
the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy 
both soul and body in hell” Here Jesus tells us that 
hell is a place to which “ both soul and body ” go. 
The body does not go to Hades, the soul goes there, 
it may have some temporary body there, but this 
body that we now inhabit lies in the ground and is 
disintegrated, but at the end of the thousand years 
Jesus will raise the bodies of the wicked dead, the 
righteous dead having already been raised at His 
coming, but at the end of the thousand years the 
wicked dead shall hear His voice and come forth 
and their bodies will be raised and soul and body 
will both be cast together into hell to spend eternity 
there and suffer (Rev. 20:11-15). It is evident 
from this verse that according to the teaching of 


176 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


Jesus Christ, hell is a place of physical torment as 
well as of mental anguish, of remorse and shame . 
The physical agonies of hell are not the worst 
agonies of hell, but they constitute a very important 
part of its misery. 

Even in this present life sin has physical penal¬ 
ties. My! but what awful physical suffering I have 
seen men undergo as a direct consequence of their 
wrongdoing. It will be so in a greatly enhanced de¬ 
gree in hell. 

(3.) Listen to a third statement of Jesus Christ, 
Matt. 25:41 R. V., “ Depart from me, ye cursed, 
into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil 
and his angels ”; and to a fourth, Matt. 25:46 
R. V., “ And these shall go away into eternal pun¬ 
ishment: but the righteous into eternal life.” Here 
the word “ hell ” is not found, but the fact of hell 
is set forth in vivid and appalling language, and it 
is Jesus Christ who is speaking. We see something 
of the awfulness of the suffering of hell, and we see 
the everlasting duration of hell. The question 
arises, Does the word “ eternal ” used in both verses 
forty-one and forty-six mean never ending? To this 
would say that the word, according to its etymology, 
might mean simply a^c-lasting, but according to its 
unvarying usage in the New Testament it does mean 
m?rlasting. That I have shown in my pamphlet 
“The Real Truth About an Everlasting Hell.” But, 
furthermore, the word “ eternal ” is used twice in 
the forty-sixth verse. In the first instance it is 
coupled with the word “ punishment ” and in the sec¬ 
ond instance it is coupled with the word “ life” 
Now what it means in one case it must mean in the 


THERE IS A HELL 


177 


other, because certainly our Lord Jesus Christ was 
no mere trickster in His use of words, and therefore 
He would not use the very same word in one sense 
in one part of a verse, and in an entirely different 
sense in another part of the verse where it is put 
in contrast with it: so what the word “ eternal ” 
means in connection with “ punishment ” it must 
also mean in connection with “life” and what it 
means in connection with “ life ” it must also mean 
in connection with “punishment” Now every one 
knows that the life that is the reward of the right¬ 
eous is endless, therefore according to the teaching of 
Jesus Christ the punishment of the lost must also be 
endless. Never accept any interpretation of any pas¬ 
sage that inevitably involves your making Jesus 
Christ out to have been a contemptible trickster in 
His teaching. 

Some one may ask, Does the “ fire ” here mean 
literal fire? We will not stop to argue that to-night. 
If you take it as a figure, remember that figures al¬ 
ways stand for facts, and that as Jesus was no liar, 
the figures He use9 never overstate the facts. How 
terrific, how appalling must be the facts that war¬ 
rant Jesus' using such a figure as this. 

It is certain that there is an everlasting hell 
because Jesus says so. We have exactly the same 
reason for believing in a future hell for the wicked 
as we have for believing in a future life of blessed¬ 
ness for the righteous, God’s word uttered by God’s 
own Son. There is no other conclusive proof for 
either Heaven or hell. Give up belief in hell and, 
if you are logical, you must give up belief in Heaven 
or any future after death. Give up your belief in 


178 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


hell, such a hell as Jesus taught, and logically noth¬ 
ing remains but annihilation for everybody. 

But if you are really logical you will not give up 
one or the other. For Jesus Christ taught both, and 
the known facts about His resurrection from the 
dead and many other things also, compel us, if we 
are really logical, to accept Jesus Christ as a teacher 
sent from God, absolutely reliable and inerrant, who 
spoke the very words of God. It is certain, then, 
that there is a hell after death, that its agonies are 
so appalling that we would better suffer any loss or 
pain than go there, that body and soul both share 
in its suffering, and that its agonies are so awful as 
to warrant the figure of “ everlasting fire ” (if it be 
a figure) in speaking of them, and that its suffering 
never ends. 

2. If there were time or necessity I could show 
you that if there is any future life at all, it is cer¬ 
tain that there is an awful and eternal hell because 
every fact of experimental psychology, every dictate 
of unprejudiced reason, every known fact of God's 
present dealing with man, points that way, and the 
only thing against such belief is an appeal to preju¬ 
dice and mere baseless sentiment, or an irrational 
dwelling upon, and drawing unwarranted inferences 
from some statements in Scripture, which inferences 
flatly contradict other plain statements of the same 
Bible. There is nothing more certain about the 
future than that there is beyond the grave an awful 
and eternal hell for many. 

II. If You Don't Look Out You Will Go There 

Now a few words about the second part of our 


THERE IS A HELL 


179 


subject. The first part of our subject as announced 
was there is a hell. That we have seen is cer¬ 
tain. The second part was, if you don't look out 
you WILL GO there. Nobody will escape hell with¬ 
out a conscious effort, without deliberate action, 
without doing one specific thing. We all deserve to 
go to hell; for we have all sinned, and God is an 
infinitely holy God. There is not a man or woman 
here to-night, young or old, who has not sinned: 
“ For all have sinned and come short of the glory 
of God” (Rom. 3:23 R. V.). “If we say we have 
no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not 
in us. . . . If we say we have not sinned, we 

make God a liar, and his word is not in us” (I John 
I : 8-10 R. V.). There is not a man or woman here 
to-night who has not sinned outrageously, there is 
not a man or woman here to-night who has not 
broken God’s first and greatest commandment and 
thereby committed the greatest sin a man or woman 
can commit. What is God’s first and great com¬ 
mandment? Listen to the words of Jesus again, 
Matt. 22:37, 38, “And he (Jesus) said unto him, 
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This 
is the great and first commandment.” This is God’s 
first and great commandment, to love God with all 
your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, 
to put God first in everything, God first in business, 
God first in politics, God first in home life, God first 
in social life, God first in amusements, God first in 
study, God first in everything. Not one of us has 
ever done it our whole life through; therefore every¬ 
one of us has broken this first and greatest of God’s 


180 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


commandments and therefore everyone of us has 
committed the greatest sin a man or woman can pos¬ 
sibly commit, and we all deserve to go to hell; and 
we will go to hell unless we look out, unless we make 
some definite effort and take some definite step to 
keep from going there. No one ever drifted to 
Heaven. Anyone who merely drifts, drifts to hell. 
Many of you here to-night are merely drifting. I 
once saw a little card. On one side of the card this 
question was printed, “ What must I do to be 
saved ? ” and then God’s own answer to the question 
was given as found in Acts 16:31, “Believe on the 
Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved.” At the bot¬ 
tom of the card it said “ Turn over.” And turning 
it over I found this question, “ What must I do to 
be lost ? ” and it gave the answer in one word, 
“ Nothing.” One does not need to do anything to 
be lost. We are lost already unless we do some¬ 
thing definite. If you are on the Niagara river, even 
way up above the Falls and the Rapids, if you just 
drift you are bound to go over the Falls. You do 
not need in order to go over the Falls to take up 
the oars and pull with the stream. The way to keep 
from going over the Falls is to pull upstream, and 
. you must begin pulling before you get into the 
rapids. Well we are in the current of sin, and the 
current is moving toward hell, at first slowly, but 
soon faster, and at last with a rush that cannot be 
resisted. Consent to drift and you are sure to wind 
up in hell. If you don’t look out you will go 
there. 

In what way must we look out in order not to go 
there? What must we do to keep us from going 


THERE IS A HELL 


181 


to hell? There is only one thing we can do that will 
keep us from going to hell. Anyone who does that 
one thing will escape hell and go to Heaven, but on 
the other hand anyone good or bad, vicious or moral, 
liberal and generous or outrageously miserly, lovely 
and amiable or mean and disgusting, anyone who 
does not do it will go to hell. What is that one 
thing? The answer is found repeatedly in the Word 
of God: Accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour. Read 
John 3: 18, “He that believeth on him is not con¬ 
demned : but he that believeth not is condemned 
already, because he hath not believed on the name 
of the only begotten son of God.” Listen to John 
1:12, “ As many as received him, to them gave he 
the right to become children of God, even to them 
that believe on his name” Listen to John 3:36, 
“ He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life, but 
he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but 
the wrath of God abideth on him” We have all 
sinned as we have seen, and therefore are hellward 
bound. But Jesus Christ died for our sins, “ All 
we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned 
every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid 
on him the iniquity of us all” (Is. 53:6). He made 
perfect atonement for our sins, and then He arose 
from the dead and lives to-day, and has “ all power 
in heaven and on earth,” and therefore has power to 
give us victory over sin every day. Accept Him as 
your atoning Saviour, who settled every one of your 
sins by dying for them on the cross, and trust God 
to forgive you because the Lord Jesus died in your 
place, and the moment you do it your sins are all 
forgiven. “ Be it known unto you therefore, 


182 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


brethren, that through this man is proclaimed unto 
you remission of sins; and by Him every one that 
believeth is justified from all things” (Acts 13:39). 
Trust Him also as your Risen Saviour to keep you 
from the power of sin, and He will. Do that and 
you will be saved, do not do it and you will spend 
eternity in hell. Really doing it involves surrender¬ 
ing your life, and your thoughts, and your will, and 
your conduct to His control. It involves also the 
open confession of Him before the world. Real faith 
always leads to open confession. As Paul puts it, 
“If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as 
Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised 
him from the dead, thou shalt be saved: for with the 
heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the 
mouth confession is made unto salvation ” (Rom. 
10:9, 10). What are you going to do? Are you 
going to choose Heaven or hell? Will you accept 
Christ to-night, and make sure of Heaven? or will 
you reject Christ and make sure of hell? 


XII 


THERE IS A HEAVEN AND WHOSOEVER 
WISHES TO CAN SPEND ETERNITY 

THERE 

“In my father's house are many mansions; if it 
were not so, I would have told you; for I go to 
prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare 
a place for you, I come again, and will receive you 
unto myself; that where I am, there ye may he also. 
And whither I go, ye know the way. Thomas saith 
unto him, Lord we know not whither thou goest; 
how knozv we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I 
am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man 
cometh unto the Father, hut by me ."— John 14: 2-6. 

A S in the previous address, I am here using 
five texts. My second text is Jno. 17:24: 
“ Father, I will that they also, whom thou 
hast given me, be with me where I am; that they 
may behold my glory; which thou hast given me: 
for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the 
world.” 

My third text is Heb. 8:1: “ Now in the things 
which we are saying the chief point is this: We 
have such an high priest, who sat down on the right 
hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.” 

My fourth text is II Cor. 5:1: “For we know 
that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dis- 

183 


.184 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


solved, we have a building from God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.” 

My fifth text is I Pet. i: 3-5: “ Blessed be the 
God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who ac¬ 
cording to his great mercy begot us again into a 
living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and un¬ 
defiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in 
Heaven for you, who by the power of God are 
guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be 
revealed in the last time.” 

My subject in the previous address was: There 
is a hell and if you don't look out you are going 
there. We saw that it was absolutely certain that 
there was a hell after death, that its agonies were 
so appalling that we would better sufifer any loss or 
pain than go there, that body and soul both shared 
in its suffering, and that its agonies are so awful as 
to warrant the figure of “everlasting fire” (if it 
be a figure) in speaking of them, and that its suffer¬ 
ing never ends. And we saw that it was certain 
that we would go there unless we did one specific 
thing, accept Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour, 
and, that that involved the surrender of ourselves 
to Him as our Lord and Master, and the open con¬ 
fession of Him before the world. To-night we turn 
from this very dark and forbidding subject to a very 
bright and alluring subject, namely, There is a 
Heaven and whosoever wishes to can spend eternity 
there . Last Sunday night I confined my texts to 
statements of Jesus Christ, because men very natu¬ 
rally are so unwilling to believe in hell, and because 
with very many the words of Jesus Christ have more 


THERE IS A HEAVEN 


185 


weight than the words of Paul or John or other 
New Testament writers. Indeed, with any really in¬ 
telligent and fair-minded and genuinely logical man, 
who faces the facts in the case, the words of Jesus 
Christ must be absolutely conclusive and decisive. 
When Jesus Christ says anything, that settles it for 
any man who is not really a fool. I know that there 
are those who pose as great scholars, who do not 
accept the statements of Jesus Christ as final, but 
that only shows how a man can be a great scholar 
and at the same time be a great fool. We all know 
that the history of human thinking abounds in in¬ 
stances where great scholars have been proven to be 
great fools. In fact through the whole history of 
human scholarship the " assured results ” of the 
scholarship of one generation have continually 
proven to be the exploded nonsense of the next gen¬ 
eration. Every generation of scholars admits that 
about the scholarship of preceding generations, but 
each generation cherishes the hope that it will not 
prove true of their generation. They fancy that they 
at last have attained “ the final science/’ and the 
“Absolute Philosophy.” Well, that is what our dear 
departed ancestors thought about the science and 
philosophy of their day, but it did not turn out that 
way. And, our descendants will be making merry 
over our scientific and philosophical follies, just as 
we are now making merry over those of the scholars 
who have passed on. But amid the wreck of human 
scientific theories and human philosophies, the words 
of Jesus Christ stand unmoved and unassailable. 
And every man who is really wise believes His 
words absolutely, and the man who does not may 


186 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


fancy that he is a Philosopher, but he would better 
spell the first syllable with two o’s rather than 
one i. 

To-night I start with two foundation texts that are 
from the words of Jesus Christ, but also use texts 
from others who were unquestionably inspired of 
God, texts that illuminate and emphasize the words 
of Christ. 

I. The Absolute Certainty That There Is a 

Heaven 

The first thought I wish to drive home and so 
rivet in your minds that you will never question it 
again is, that It is absolutely certain that there is a 
Heaven to which certain persons are going. I am 
as certain that there is such a place as Heaven as 
I am that there is such a place as Los Angeles. 
Why is it absolutely certain that there is such a place 
as Heaven? 

i. First of all, It is absolutely certain that there 
is such a place as Heaven because Jesus Christ says 
so. He says so in the first of our texts. He says, 
“ I go to prepare a place for you/' He does not say, 
I go to prepare a state or condition for you, He 
says, “ I go to prepare a place for you,” and when 
our Lord Jesus says “ place,” He means place. All 
this modern swash about Heaven being a condition, 
or a state of mind, has no warrant in the words of 
Jesus Christ nor in anything else in the Bible. Of 
course it would be better to be in a heavenly moral 
condition and a heavenly state of mind in a de¬ 
cidedly unheavenly place, than to be in a hellish 
moral condition and hellish state of mind in a heav- 


THERE IS A HEAVEN 


187 


enly place, but it is better yet to be in a heavenly 
moral condition and heavenly state of mind in a 
heavenly place, and that is what is ahead of us if 
we meet the conditions that I shall state later. Yes, 
Heaven is a place. We are not going to be disem¬ 
bodied spirits in our eternal condition any more than 
Jesus Christ to-day is a disembodied spirit. His 
spirit, His real, essential personality, was disem¬ 
bodied for three days and three nights. He left His 
body on the cross, and went down into Hades, but 
after three days His body was raised, which we have 
seen again and again from this platform is the best 
proven fact of history, and His spirit returned to 
that body, and took that resurrected, transformed, 
and glorified -body up to Heaven with Him, and 
Stephen saw Him in His body after His ascension 
(Acts 7: 55, 56 R. V.), and Saul of Tarsus saw Him 
after His ascension, and He is in a bodily form to¬ 
night, in a place, Heaven. We, too, shall have 
bodies and be in a place, and that place is Heaven. 
You may like this disembodied spirit stuff, I do not. 
As I read Sir Oliver Lodge’s “ Raymond,” and the 
descriptions given by the alleged spirit of his son, 
through various spiritualistic fakirs, of the life he 
was living since his death, I thought to myself, I 
cannot see what comfort Sir Oliver Lodge gets out 
of that. If that is the Heaven of Spiritualism I 
would about as soon that my son should be in hell, 
and much rather that he would be annihilated and 
utterly cease to be. But that is not the Heaven 
Jesus Christ teaches, nor is it the Heaven of actual 
fact. Heaven is a place, and no one who goes there 
will have any desire to come down and hover around 


188 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


darkened and uncanny rooms, and get in contact 
with his friends through some low-living medium, 
who is usually a drunkard or a dope fiend, and many 
of whom are notoriously immoral, and all of whom 
are of a low type of mentality. 

Jesus Christ emphasizes the fact that Heaven is 
a place by the first statement of the same verse when 
He says, “ In my father’s house are many mansions ” 
that is many " Abiding places ” as distinguished 
from the transitory character of our earthly homes. 
I had a home in Montrose, Pennsylvania. It was as 
beautiful and comfortable a home as I desired in 
this world. My wife was tired of wandering about 
Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and America, and 
wanted to settle down, and I bought this home; and 
we thought it would be our home for the rest of our 
earthly lives. She said, Let us call it “ Alabama,” 
which means “ Here we rest.” And we called it 
“Alabama,” and we rested, or she did. How long? 
Less than four years, and here we are away out in 
California, and in a few months from now we will 
be in Asia again. But in the next world we have a 
u Continuing City” (as God calls it in Heb. 13: 14) ; 
the Revised Version translation is “ an abiding city.” 
The Greek word translated “ abiding ” is the par¬ 
ticiple of the verb from which the noun translated 
“Mansions” in John 14:2 is derived. Heaven is 
a place, and a permanent place . Yes, Heaven is a 
place. 

Furthermore, Jesus says, “ I go to prepare a 
place.” Evidently He was going from a place where 
He then was, Jerusalem, on this earth, to another 
place where He was not then but was soon to be. 


THERE IS A HEAVEN 


189 


What was that place? Verse twenty-eight of the 
same chapter answers the question, “ Ye heard how 
I said to you, I go away, and I come unto you. If 
ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go 
unto the father.” Here Jesus says, “I am going 
away from where I now am and where you are. I 
am going away from you to My Father ” that is God. 
Well, where is God? Turn to the Lord’s Prayer 
as found in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus 
will tell you just where God is. That prayer which 
our Lord taught us begins with the words “ Our 
Father Who art in Heaven” (Matt. 6:9 R. V.). 
That is where God is, “in Heaven.” Of course God 
is everywhere in His spirit, but that is only one side 
of the truth. God has a local habitation and that 
habitation is Heaven. That is where God is, and 
that is where our Lord Jesus Christ now is, at His 
right hand. That is where Stephen saw Him (Acts 
7:55, 56). That is where we are going some day. 
Somebody heard that I was going to China next 
summer, and they asked me if I would not take them 
along as private secretary. Let me tell you, I am 
going before a great while to a much more interest¬ 
ing place than China. I am going to Heaven, and 
any of you can go along if you wish to. I will tell 
you how before I get through to-night. 

There are other places in the Sermon on the 
Mount in which our Lord Jesus tells us that Heaven 
is a place, and that God the Father is there. He 
tells us so, for example, in Matt. 7:11, “If ye then, 
being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your 
children, how much more shall your Father which is 
in Heaven, give good things to them that ask Him ? ” 


190 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


And in Matt. 7:21, “Not every one that saith unto 
me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of 
Heaven; but he that doeth the will of my father 
which is in Heaven” 

Our Lord Jesus tells us in another of our texts 
that Heaven is a place, and a glorious place, and that 
all those who will believe on Him are going there. 
Listen again to John 17:24, “Father, I will that 
they also, whom thou hast given me, he with me 
where I am; that they may behold my glory which 
thou hast given me.” If there is anything that Jesus 
teaches over and over again, and that is therefore 
absolutely certain, because there is no possibility of 
doubting what Jesus taught about it, it is, that there 
is a Heaven, and that Heaven is a place, and that 
God is there in a sense that He is nowhere else, and 
that Jesus is now there, and that all who really be¬ 
lieve in Him are to be there some day. 

2. In the second place, It is certain that there is 
a Heaven, not only because our Lord Jesus says so, 
but also because those who have been unmistakably 
proven to have been inspired of God say so. 

Paul says so in II Cor. 5:1 R. V., “ For we know 
that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dis¬ 
solved, we have a building from God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal, in the heavens” The 
“ house of God ” of which Paul here speaks, refers, 
as the context plainly shows, to our glorified resur¬ 
rection body, the body made in the likeness of our 
Lord’s own glorified body (Phil. 3:21 R. V.). And 
Paul here tells us that that body is not only “ eter¬ 
nal ” but “ eternal, in the heavens” That body will 


THERE IS A HEAVEN 


191 


exist elsewhere eternally, and where that body will 
exist eternally is “in the heavens” 

Peter also tells us that there is a Heaven, and that 
it is a place, in I Pet. i: 3-5: “ Blessed be the God 
and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according 
to his great mercy begat us again into a living hope 
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 
unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and 
that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for you, 
who by the power of God are guarded through faith 
unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last 
time.” Here Peter tells us that Heaven is a place, 
and that in that place there is an “ inheritance incor¬ 
ruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,” 
securely kept there for all those who are themselves 
kept by the power of God through faith unto that 
glorious “ salvation ready to be revealed in the last 
time.” People are wondering in these days of bank 
looting, and high-power explosives, and Bolshevik 
uprisings, where they can store their possessions 
with absolute safety. Well, there is no place on this 
earth where you can store them with absolute safety. 
Even if they do not succeed in blowing up your safe 
or safety deposit vault, you may die any day, and 
then you cannot get at your possessions, and some 
one else will get them, probably the lawyers. But 
if they are “reserved in Heaven ,” they are abso¬ 
lutely safe. People sometimes want to know if you 
have your money in a “ Federal Reserve Bank.” 
Better have it in the Heavenly Reserve bank. If it 
is there not only can “ neither moth nor rust corrupt 
nor thieves break through and steal,” but further¬ 
more there is no power either in earth or hell to rob 


192 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


you of it. It is absolutely eternally safe. And 
what a glorious inheritance it is, “ incorruptible, and 
undefiled, and that fadeth not away.” It is more 
specifically described in Rom. 8:17, “ Heirs of God, 
and joint-heirs with Christ,” that is, heirs of all that 
God has and all that God is. Better give up any¬ 
thing and everything on earth and get Heaven, than 
to get everything that you can get on earth, great 
wealth, beautiful homes, high-power sedan automo¬ 
biles, diamonds and other gems, operas, theatres, 
balls, and all the rest, and lose Heaven. Do you 
know how I feel when I ride by the palatial homes 
of some of our very rich and utterly godless mil¬ 
lionaires, and sometimes enter them? I do not have 
a feeling of envy at all, I feel a great pity; so rich 
to-day, and utter paupers to-morrow, paupers for all 
eternity. 

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews also 
teaches that there is a Heaven, and that it is a place. 
It makes no difference whether Paul is the author 
of this Epistle to the Hebrews or someone else, the 
book in either case is inspired of God. In either 
case it bears the marks of its inspiration on every 
page. It differs radically from all the other litera¬ 
ture, outside the Bible, of that time or any other 
time. It has the unmistakable inspired flavour. 
Listen to what God says in Heb. 8:1, “ Now in the 
things which we are saying, the chief point is this: 
We have such an high priest (that is, of course, 
Jesus Christ) who sat down on the right hand of the 
throne of the Majesty in the heavens” God here 
teaches us that there is a Heaven (or Heavens), 
that it is a place, that His Own throne is there, 


THERE IS A HEAVEN 


193 


and that Jesus is there. Elsewhere in this same book 
He tells us that we are going there, too, if we are 
Christ’s. He tells us that Christ has entered Heaven 
as “ a forerunner” (Chapter 6:20), that is He has 
gone there before us and we are to follow after. 

It is absolutely certain then that there is a Heaven 
because Jesus Christ says so, and because men who 
beyond an honest doubt were inspired of God, men 
through whom God Himself spoke, say so. That 
settles it. As I stated last night, we know absolutely 
nothing about the eternal future but what God has 
been pleased to tell us through His Son Jesus Christ 
and through His inspired servants, the writers of the 
New Testament. That is absolutely sure, all else is 
mere guesswork and baseless speculation. What the 
philosophers or the speculative theologians or the 
scientists guess about Heaven or hell is of no more 
value that what an inmate of an imbecile asylum 
guesses about them. Here the philosophers and 
scientists are entirely out of their sphere. A 
story is told of a distinguished man of sci¬ 
ence who had to cross a ferry in a rowboat. 
As the man at the oars pulled him across, the scien¬ 
tist said to him, “ Do you know Astronomy ? ” 
“No,” replied the rugged oarsman, “I do not.” 
“ Well, then,” said the man of science, “ a quarter of 
your life is gone.” “ Do you know anything about 
geology?” “No.” “Then one-half of your life is 
gone.” “ Do you know anything about biology ? ” 
“ No.” “ Then three-quarters of your life are gone.” 
Just then the boat struck a snag and upset. As they 
plunged into the water the oarsman cried, “ Do you 
know how to swim?” “No.” “Well then your 


194 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


whole life is gone,” and the ferryman struck out for 
shore, but the great scientist drowned. He was out 
of his element. And when mere scientists and 
philosophers begin speculating about the eternal 
future, they are out of their element, and they floun¬ 
der around and drown, unless they will let some one 
who knows his Bible pull them ashore. What the 
scientist or philosopher speculates about Heaven or 
argues about Heaven is pure and simple guessing, 
and absolutely worthless: what God says through 
His Son, and through the inspired writers of the 
Bible, is absolutely sure. It is absolutely sure then 
that there is a Heaven, and that Heaven is a place, 
and that it is a wonderful place, and that God is 
there, and Christ is there, and many of us are going 
there, and we can all go there if we so desire. 

II. What Kind of a Place is Heaven? 

Now what sort of a place is Heaven? Some think 
that we know nothing about that, that it is all guess¬ 
work, and they quote I Cor. 2:9 to prove it, “ Eye 
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered 
into the heart of man, the things which God hath 
prepared for them that love him.” But they stop 
too soon. They should quote the next verse, “But 
God hath revealed them unto us hy his Spirit: for 
the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things 
of God.” We know nothing about Heaven but what 
God has revealed, but God has been pleased to re¬ 
veal a great deal about Heaven. I think very few 
Christians realize how much God has told us in the 
Bible about Heaven. I think even very few Bible 
scholars realize how much God has told us about 


THERE IS A HEAVEN 


195 


Heaven. I have studied this subject more or less 
for many years, but when I took it up again last 
Monday night, I confess that I was surprised to find 
so much about Heaven in the Bible. What God, 
Who made Heaven and Who lives there, has told 
us about Heaven in the Bible, what God has re¬ 
vealed to us about Heaven through His Son in the 
Bible, is not only very interesting but immensely 
cheering, and calculated to awaken in every wise and 
sensible heart an intense desire to go there. But 
we have not time to go into that at length to-night. 
Just this hasty summary without any attempt to 
cite the passages or to expound at length: 

1. Heaven is a place of matchless, and to our 
present minds, inconceivable, external, material, vis¬ 
ible beauty. I love beauty and it has been my good 
fortune to see a very large share of the most re¬ 
nowned beauty spots of Europe, Asia, Australasia, 
and America. I have sat for hours just drinking 
in the beauty of some of these places. But nothing 
I have ever seen in Japan or China or India or 
Australia or New Zealand or in the Yosemite or the 
Grand Canyon of the Colorado, or in the Alps, or 
in the Rockies, or on Loch Lomond, or at Ben 
Nevis, or anywhere else, can be compared for one 
moment to the beauty and majesty and sublimity and 
glory of that land beyond the shadows—the peerless 
City of God. 

2. Heaven is a land of indescribable harmony, 
and melody, and music. They have a choir of one 
hundred million voices there, (Rev. 5:11), and 
every voice sweeter and richer than Caruso's, and 


196 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


no orchestra of earth can match those “ harpers harp¬ 
ing with their harps.” 

3. Heaven is a place of countless wealth. Every 
inhabitant is a multi-millionaire, “ heirs of God, and 
joint-heirs with Jesus Christ” (Rom. 8: 17). 

4. Heaven is a place unmarred by Sin, where 
God’s will is perfectly done by all, and where “ noth¬ 
ing that defileth ” mind or affections or will shall 
ever enter. 

5. Heaven is a place where there is no trace of 
sickness or twinge of pain, and where Death never 
enters, and where no tear is ever shed. 

6. Heaven is a place of highest, holiest and most 
ennobling companionships. 

7. Heaven is the place where God is, and where 
His son, Jesus Christ, is, and where we shall be with 
Christ and zvith God the Father, and we “shall see 
his face ” (Rev. 22: 4). Oh! to see the face of God! 
Moses wanted to see the face of God, but was told 
that no man could see His face and live (Ex. 33:20). 
But with the strength of our resurrection bodies and 
perfectly redeemed spirits we can gaze and gaze and 
gaze upon that wondrous face of God, and live. I 
wonder, if when God took Moses up into Mount 
Nebo, to die, He did not let Moses have his prayer 
at last and see His face and then die, die a death of 
immeasurable ecstasy. But in that world we shall 
see His face, and live! and be satisfied! Oh! how 
profoundly significant are the words of the Psalmist 
in Ps. 17:15, as rendered in the Revised Version, 
“ I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with beholding 
thy form.” 


THERE IS A HEAVEN 


197 


III. Anyone Who Wishes to, Can Spend 
Eternity in Heaven 

Now just a few words on the last part of our sub¬ 
ject: Anyone who wishes to, can spend eter¬ 
nity in Heaven. Why do I say that? Because 
our Lord Jesus says so. He says so in our first 
text. He says, “ Whither I go, ye know the way.” 
And then Thomas said unto Him, “ Lord, we know 
not whither thou goest; how know we the way ? ” 
Then Jesus replied, “ I am the way, and the truth, 
and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by 
me.” Here He says that He Himself is the Way to 
Fleavcn, and anyone who takes Him takes the way 
to Heaven, and if you really take Him and start to 
Heaven you are bound to get there. He says also 
in John 10:9, “ I am the door: by me if any man 
enter in he shall be saved.” “ If any man,” mind 
you, no exceptions. The poorest are as welcome as 
the richest, the most ignorant are as welcome as the 
wisest, the vilest sinner is as welcome as the finest 
saint. “If any man.” Come along, friends. 

Peter also tells us the same thing in our last text, 
I Pet. 1:3-5, “ Blessed be the God and father of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy 
begat us again into a living hope by the resurrection 
of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance 
incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not 
away, reserved in Pleaven for you, zvho by the power 
of God are guarded through faith unto salvation 
ready to be revealed in the last time.” That is all, 
“ kept by the power of God through faith.” It is 
not a question of our puny strength, but of His Al- 


198 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


mighty strength, given to all who just believe on 
His Son. Believe in Jesus Christ, that is all. All 
God’s children are certainly going to spend eternity 
in the Father’s House, and Jno. i: 12 tells us how 
to become children of God, “ as many as received 
him, to them gave he the right to become children 
of God, even to them that believe on his name.” 
Just accept Jesus, that is all. Accept Him as your 
personal Saviour, the One whom God Himself tells 
us bore all your sins in His own body on the cross, 
and trust God to forgive all your sins because the 
Lord Jesus died in your place. Accept Him as your 
Risen Saviour who now lives in Heaven, and who 
has “ all power in Heaven and on earth,” and there¬ 
fore has power to keep you every day and hour, and 
just trust Him to do it. Accept Him as your Lord 
and Master to whom you surrender the entire con¬ 
trol of your thoughts and life, and confess Him as 
your Lord before the world, and you will spend 
eternity in Heaven. Refuse to do that, or neglect 
to do that, and you will spend eternity in hell. 
There is a Heaven, and whosoever wishes to can 
spend eternity there. Do you wish to? It is up to 
each one of you to-night to say for yourself whether 
you will spend eternity in Heaven or eternity in hell. 
Which do you choose? Oh! unless you are a poor, 
blinded fool you will choose to spend eternity in 
Heaven. Then accept the Lord Jesus Christ right 
now. You may say, “I do not want to do it right 
now, but I will do it some future time.” Take no 
chances. Hell is too awful to take any chance of 
going there, and Heaven is too glorious to take any 
chance of missing it. There is only one thing for 


THERE IS A HEAVEN 


199 


any man or woman who has a least spark of wisdom 
left and who has not already accepted Jesus Christ, 
to do, and that is to accept Jesus Christ and confess 
Him to-night. 


XIII 


1 


THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 

" The Holy Ghost saith, to-day ” — Hebrew 3 : 7. 

T HE Day of Golden Opportunity is To-day. 
Golden opportunities, opportunities of price¬ 
less worth are open to every one of us 
to-day. But “ to-morrow ” has no sure promise 
for any one of us. “ The Holy Ghost saith, 
To-day,” and Conscience also cries “ To-day,” 
and the voice of Reason and the voice of History 
and the voice of Experience unite in one loud chorus 
and shout, “ To-day.” Only the voices of lassitude 
and laziness and folly murmur, “ To-morrow.” The 
Holy Ghost is every calling “ To-day.” Men in their 
folly are forever saying, “ To-morrow.” 

When the frightful plague of frogs came upon 
Pharaoh of old and upon his people, Pharaoh in his 
terror sent for Moses and Aaron and said, “ Entreat 
Jehovah, that he take away the frogs from me, and 
my people, and I will let the people go, that they 
may sacrifice unto Jehovah” (Ex. 8:8). Moses re¬ 
plied, “ Against what time shall I entreat for thee, 
and for thy servants, and for thy people, that the 
frogs be destroyed from thee and thy houses and 
remain in the river only?” One would naturally 

suppose Pharaoh would have answered, “ At once,” 

200 



THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 201 


but Pharaoh, like many another king, played the fool 
and answered, “ To-morrow ” (Ex. 8:9, 10). Men 
show a similar folly and often a greater folly in 
these days. When urged to forsake sin with its 
miseries and degradation and perils and turn to 
Christ with the joy and peace, and ennobling of our 
character and security that He gives, they answer, 
“Yes, I think I will.” “When?” “Oh, to-mor¬ 
row.” But “ the Holy Ghost saith, To-day.” 

A poor wretch came into my office one day. He 
had been drinking and drinking had brought misery 
into his heart and ruin into his life. I asked, “ Will 
you quit drinking and turn to Jesus Christ? ” “ Oh,” 
he exclaimed, “ there is nothing else that I can do, 
I will.” “ Will you do it now?” He hung his head, 
and murmured, “ not now, to-morrow.” But “ the 
Holy Ghost saith, To-day.” To-morrow is the 
devil’s day and the fool’s day. To-day is God’s day, 
and the wise man’s day. 

I wish to give you to-night some conclusive and 
unanswerable reasons why every man and woman in 
this auditorium who makes any pretensions to in¬ 
telligence and common sense should not only accept 
the Lord Jesus as his Lord and Saviour, but should 
accept Him here before he leaves this building to¬ 
night, if he has not already done it. What I want 
to get is action, immediate action, intelligent and 
wise action. And the only action that is intelligent 
and wise for anyone who has not already accepted 
Jesus Christ is to accept Him right here to-night. 
Resolutions to do the right thing and the wise thing 
at some indefinite time in the future are of no value 


202 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


whatever. God’s time is now. “ The Holy Ghost 
saith. To-day.” 

I. Because the Lord Jesus Brings Peace to the 
Tormenting Conscience 
I. The first reason why every man and woman 
in this auditorium who has not already accepted 
Jesus Christ should not only accept Him but accept 
Him to-night, is, Because the Lord Jesus brings 
peace to the tormenting conscience as soon as He 
is accepted, and the really wise man will not only 
desire that peace but desire it just as soon as he can 
get it. Wherever there is sin there will be an ac¬ 
cusing conscience. And we “ all have sinned.” If 
any man has sinned and his conscience does not ac¬ 
cuse him and torment him he has sunken very low, 
very low. There are, of course, different degrees 
of torment of conscience and different kinds of tor¬ 
ment of conscience. With some the pain is sharp 
and piercing, with some it is dull and grinding, but 
there is pain, there is unrest, there is no peace in the 
heart where sin has entered until that sin has been 
forgiven. But Jesus Christ gives peace to the most 
agonized conscience. Men and women have come to 
me in all degrees of misery over the memory of 
some sin that they have committed and I have 
pointed them to the Lord Jesus, and everyone who 
has really gone to Him has found rest. I could not 
tell how many men and women have come to me 
who were driven to the very verge of hopeless de¬ 
spair by the accusations of their conscience and were 
contemplating self-destruction in the hope of thus 
getting away from their mental agony. But I led 


THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 203 


them to Jesus Christ, and now they have rest and 
the peace of God that passeth all understanding. 

A young man came to me one Sunday morning in 
Chicago in awful agony. He had sinned grievously 
and was reaping the harvest. He was contemplat¬ 
ing all sorts of mad expedients to escape the inevi¬ 
table consequences of his sin. I pointed him to the 
Son of God and he accepted Him. Afterwards he 
brought to me his companion in sin. She was fully 
determined on a desperate deed that was likely to 
land her in prison or in the cemetery. I plead with 
her and pointed her to the real cure, to the Saviour. 
When she left me she was still undecided as to what 
she would do. She afterwards decided and decided 
right. One night a long time afterwards, as I was 
going down the back stairs of the Moody church to 
the inquiry room, a young, happy faced woman 
stopped me and said, “ I want to thank you for what 
you did for me, and for my husband and for my 
child.” I did not recognize her for a moment, and 
she said, “ I am the young woman who came to 
you,” and she explained the circumstances. It was 
the woman who had contemplated the destruction of 
her child, and her own destruction for time and for 
eternity. But she had found peace in Jesus Christ. 
Men and women with tormenting consciences, and 
with uneasy, restless hearts, there is rest for you in 
Jesus Christ. If you are wise you will not only find 
it, but you will find it to-night. “ The Holy Ghost 
saith, To-day.” You need not spend even one more 
day or one more hour in the agony of your accus¬ 
ing, tormenting conscience. 


204 HOW TO BE SAVED 

II. Because Jesus Christ Brings Joy Unspeak¬ 
able and Full of Glory to Those Who 

Accept Him 

The second reason why every man and woman in 
this auditorium to-night who has not already ac¬ 
cepted Jesus Christ should not only accept Him but 
accept Him to-night is, Because Jesus Christ brings 
joy unspeakable and full of glory, a joy to which the 
joy of this world is as nothing in comparison, to 
every one who accepts Him as soon as they really 
accept Him and confess Him. Any really wise man 
will not only desire this joy but desire it at once. 
I for one not only wish the best I can get, but I 
wish it as quickly as I can get it. The joy that is 
in Jesus Christ is the very best joy one can get. 
There is not a particle of doubt about that. Ask 
anyone who has ever tried the world and has then 
really tried Jesus Christ. You cannot find one single 
man or woman who has really tried the joy that 
there is in Christ, anyone who has really put his 
trust in Him as his personal Saviour and unre¬ 
servedly surrendered to Him as his Lord and Mas¬ 
ter, who will not tell you that the w r orld has no joy 
for a moment comparable with that joy which is 
found in Jesus Christ. No matter how rare their 
opportunities may have been for enjoying the world, 
they will tell you without the slightest hesitation 
that the joy that one finds in Christ is incomparably 
greater and finer and more satisfying than any joy 
the world can give. There are millions of witnesses 
to this fact, and their testimony is absolutely unani¬ 
mous. I know the joy that comes from wealth, I 
know the joy that comes from the theatre, I know 


THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 205 


the joy that comes from the dance, from the card- 
table, and the joy that comes from the race course, 
and the joy that comes from the wine supper, and 
so on down to the end of the catalogue of this 
world’s joys. I know also the joy that comes from 
literature and from art, the joy that comes from 
music, from science, from philosophy and from 
travel. I know practically every joy that this world 
has to give, but I say to you to-night that the joy 
of all these put together is nothing to the joy un¬ 
speakable and full of glory that comes from a gen¬ 
uine acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Saviour, and 
a whole-hearted surrender to Him as our Lord, and 
a constant and open confession of Him before the 
world, and from receiving the Holy Spirit Whom 
He gives to those who do thus accept Him and fully 
surrender to Him and confess Him. Men and 
women if you wish the highest, deepest, purest, and 
most abounding joy, immeasurably the most satis¬ 
fying joy that is to be known not only in the life 
which is to come but in the life which now is, not 
only come to Jesus Christ but come to-night. “ The 
Holy Ghost saith, To-day.” 

III. Because Jesus Christ Brings Deliverance 
From tue Power of Sin 
The third reason why every man and woman 
in this auditorium who has not already accepted 
Jesus Christ should not only accept Him but accept 
Him to-night, is, Because Jesus Christ brings deliv¬ 
erance from the pozver of sin, and any zvise man or 
woman not only zvishes deliverance from the power 
of sin but wishes it as soon as he can get it. There 


206 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


is no other form of slavery known to man so de¬ 
grading and so wretched as the slavery of sin. 
Better far be the poor black slave of the most brutal 
nigger driver the South ever knew than to be the 
slave of rum, or the slave of lust, or the slave of 
bad temper, or the slave of dope, or the slave of 
an impure imagination, or the slave of greed for 
gold, or the slave of any other form of sin. Poor 
old Uncle Tom, groaning in his cabin after the cruel 
blows of the brutal Legree, is not so pitiable an 
object as yonder wretch, poor or rich, who is under 
the lash of appetite or of lust or of dope or of any 
other sin. But there is freedom right at hand, right 
now. Jesus Christ sets men free from sin in all its 
form. He sets men free who have been slaves for 
years. He sets them free in a moment. Any sin¬ 
ner here to-night can find deliverance in Christ from 
any sin, can find it to-night. What Jesus said when 
He was here on earth is just as true to-day. 
“ Everyone that committeth sin is the slave of sin ” 
(Jno. 8:34). But thank God it is also as true 
to-day as when He said it that, “ If, therefore, the 
Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed ” 
(Jno. 8:36). Any man or woman here who has 
a spark of intelligence left will not only wish deliv¬ 
erance from sin and its awful bondage, but wish it 
at once. What would you have thought of any old- 
time black slave of a vile and cruel master who had 
been offered freedom and answered, ‘‘Yes, I wish 
liberty. My bondage has been awful. But I don’t 
want the freedom just yet. I will wait until next 
year. I will wait until next month. I will wait 
until next week. I will wait until to-morrow.” 


' THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 207 


You would exclaim, “ What a fool! ” But he would 
not be so colossal a fool as you are when you say, 
“ Yes, I do wish deliverance from the power of sin,” 
and then add, “ but not to-night, to-morrow.” Oh, 
men, listen, “ The Holy Ghost saith. To-day.” 

IV. Because Jesus Christ Brings Beauty of 

Character 

The fourth reason why every man and woman 
who has not already accepted Jesus Christ should 
not only accept Him but accept Him to-night, is, 
Because Jesus Christ brings beauty of character, 
and every wise man and woman will not only desire 
beauty of character, but desire it just as soon as 
they can get it. I sometimes notice advertisements 
in the papers that read, “ The Secret of Beauty.” 
I can tell you the secret of beauty, men and women, 
the secret of permanent, indestructible beauty. It 
is Jesus Christ in the heart. He not only beautifies 
the face, He beautifies the soul. He makes over the 
soul that trusts in Him into His own glorious like¬ 
ness. I have seen some of the foulest men and 
women I ever knew made over into the fairest; and 
it was Jesus Christ Who did it. 

Sam Hadley of the Water Street Mission, New 
York, was the friend of all men who were down and 
out. He was always on the lookout for an oppor¬ 
tunity to help some man who was about as bad as 
they make them onto his feet, and to lead him to 
Christ and to thus get the man saved. A man said 
to Mr. Hadley one day, “ I have a friend whom I 
wish you would take an interest in.” Sam Hadley 
asked, “ Who is he?” “ He is Bowery Ike.” 


208 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


“Well/’ said Hadley, “what is he anyhow?” The 
man replied, “ He is a crook. He makes his living 
by stealing and picking pockets and all that sort of 
thing. Just at present he is on Blackwell's Island, 
serving a term there. You can find him more 
easily now than usual.” Sam Hadley went over to 
Blackwell's Island and looked up Bowery Ike, and 
found him; for he could not get away, he was be¬ 
hind the bars. Bowery Ike had no use for Sam 
Hadley, except when he got out he came around 
to Sam to get a little money to get a new suit of 
clothes. But he was soon off to the Island again. 
Every time he would come out of confinement he 
would go around to see Hadley, but as soon as he 
got on his feet again he would go back to his 
crooked work. Sam Hadley followed Bowery Ike 
for seven long years, and one day at the end of the 
seventh year Bowery Ike was thoroughly sick and 
tired of sin, and this time not only came to Sam 
Hadley but came to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ 
opened His arms and took Bowery Ike in. After 
Bowery Ike had been saved about a year, Sam 
wrote me, saying, “ Mr. Torrey, I have a man who 
wants to study out at your school. They used to 
call him Bowery Ike. His right name is Ira Sny¬ 
der. We believe in him. He has been a tough cus¬ 
tomer. He has been a hard case. But he is saved 
and we believe God wants to use him. Will you 
take him?” “Dear Sam,” I replied, “I will take 
anybody you recommend.” He wrote back, “ I 
recommend him.” Then I wrote, “ Send him on.” 
And Bowery Ike (Ira Snyder) came. Listen, men, 
though that man had been a crook from his boyhood, 


THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 209 


for he commenced picking pockets when a little lad, 
though he had been a crook nearly all his life, 
he became one of the most beautiful Christians I 
have ever met in all my life. And I say to you 
people to-night I have known thieves who have come 
to Christ, burglars who have come to Christ, train 
robbers and bank robbers who have come to Christ, 
I have known harlots, and murderers and people 
guilty of every kind of crime I ever heard of, who 
have come to Christ and have become some of the 
loveliest Christians I have ever known. Yes, some 
of the men and women who were once down in the 
deepest depths of sin. But to come back to Ira Sny¬ 
der, Bowery Ike. He came on to Chicago. He 
stayed with us about a year, a little over a year. 
One night he said to me, “ I want to walk home 
with you and have a little talk with you.” On the 
way to my home he said, “ I made a little visit down 
in New York a few weeks ago. I think they need 
me in New York. I have loved it in Chicago, I 
would like to stay on, but I believe they need me 
in New York. I have written Mr. Hadley that I 
am ready to go back to New York and help in the 
work.” A few days after this Ira Snyder was 
taken down with the influenza, a slight attack, not 
a very serious case, but he went to bed with it. 
They did not think he was very ill. But as I was 
leaving the dining table one night the maid told me 
that Mr. Hunter, who was one of my assistants 
there at that time, as he is now here, wished to see 
me. I met Mr. Hunter and he said, “ Mr. Torrey, 
Ira Snyder is dead.” I said, “ What, John? You 
don't mean Ira Snyder?” We had another man at 


210 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


the Institute at the same time whose name was 
much the same, and who was very ill at that time, 
too, and I thought Mr. Hunter must mean him. 
“ You don’t mean Ira Snyder,” I said, “ you must 
mean So-and-So,” naming the other man. “ No,” 
Mr. Hunter said. “Mr. Torrey, Ira Snyder is 
dead. He died very suddenly about an hour ago.” 
I asked, “Where is he, John?” “He is over at 
the undertaker’s. They have prepared him for his 
burial and have placed him in his coffin. They are 
going to have the services to-morrow, and I thought 
I should come to tell you to-night.” “ That was 
right, John,” I replied, “ let us go over.” We went 
to the undertaker’s, which was not far away, and 
walked into the parlours. And there in a beautiful 
coffin lay Ira Snyder. When I looked down into 
that face, one of the noblest faces I have ever looked 
into in my life, I wull tell you what I did, I could 
not help it, I broke down, and, leaning over, I 
kissed Ira Snyder’s beautiful face as he lay there 
in his coffin. Yes, friends, Bowery Ike had been a 
crook before he became a Christian, but by the 
power of Jesus Christ in his heart he became one 
of the loveliest Christians I ever knew in my life. 
I don’t think my heart ever ached over anybody out¬ 
side my own family as it did over Ira Snyder, who 
was formerly a pickpocket, a burglar, and every¬ 
thing that was bad, but who in his lost and ruined 
condition came to Jesus and the heart of Jesus was 
big enough to take him in and Jesus came into his 
heart and transformed him into His own likeness. 
The Lord Jesus is doing that sort of thing every 
day. 


THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 211 


And the Lord Jesus is also taking others who are 
not so foul, who indeed the world thinks fair, and 
He is making them immeasurably fairer.. It is 
Jesus and Jesus only who makes truly lovely char¬ 
acters. Ah, men and women, do you not wish to 
be fair? Not only fair in the eyes of man, but 
fair in the eyes of God? You may be. It is Jesus’ 
work to make you so. Let Him begin it at once.. 
Let Him begin it to-night. “ The Holy Ghost 
saith, To-day.” What do you say? “To-morrow”? 
No, not if you have a particle of sense left, and I 
believe you have. You will say, “To-night, Right 
now.” 

• ' i'Al Vi f J 7\ 1 ] o 7 [ • t . m y \ y: ■ •' cl « I j -Jfi V- v } ' 

V. Because Jesus Christ Fills Our Lives With 

Highest Usefulness 

The fifth reason why every man and woman 
in this auditorium who has not already accepted 
Jesus Christ should not only accept Him but accept 
Him to-night is, Because Jesus Christ fills our lives 
with highest usefulness; and every wise man and 
every wise woman desires not only to he useful hut 
desires to begin being useful as soon as possible . 
The Christian life is the only really useful life. We 
look at the life of many a one who is not a Chris¬ 
tian and say, “ there is a useful life ”; but God 
looks at it and looks through it, looks at it in all 
its bearings, and writes this verdict upon it, “ use¬ 
less.” Whether you and I see it or not, the man 
or woman who is not with Christ is against Him 
(Matt. 12:30), and the man who is against Jesus 
Christ is against God and against humanity. His 
life is useless and worse than useless. But the life 


212 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


that is fully surrendered to Jesus Christ becomes 
at once a useful life. It may be the mere wreck 
of a life, but it becomes at once a useful life. 

A friend of mine found one of the most hopeless 
wrecks of womanhood in New York City and 
brought her to Jesus Christ. I think this poor 
creature lived less than two years after her con¬ 
version and many months of that time were spent 
upon a sick bed. But that woman was used to the 
eternal salvation of more than a hundred persons 
while she lay there dying, and the story of the trans¬ 
formed life of “ the Bluebird of Mulberry Bend ” 
has gone around the world and saved thousands. 

Come to Christ. Really come to Him. He will 
make you useful. Come at once that your useful¬ 
ness may begin at once. I am glad I came to the 
Lord Jesus when I did, but Oh! if I had only come 
sooner. How many precious years were wasted! 
How many golden opportunities were lost, oppor¬ 
tunities that will never return. Come, men and 
women. Come now. “ The Holy Ghost saith, 
To-day.” 

VI. Because the Sooner We Come to Christ 
the Fuller and Richer Will Be Our 

Eternity 

The sixth reason why every man and woman 
in this auditorium who has not already accepted 
Jesus Christ should not only accept Him but accept 
Him to-night, is, Because the sooner we come to 
Christ the fuller and richer will be our eternity. 
The eternity of each one of us will be just what 
we make it in the life that now is. You are con- 


THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 213 


structing your eternity, every day. Every day of 
true service for Christ makes our reward so much 
the greater and our eternity so much the fuller and 
richer. Come to Christ next Sunday and you will 
be behind for all eternity by as much as you might 
have wrought this week. You may cry in coming 
years, “ Backward, turn backward, O Time in Thy 
flight,” but Time will not turn backward in its 
flight. Time cannot turn backward. Time is flying 
by every moment and never returns. To-day is hur¬ 
rying by us at express speed. To-morrow will soon 
follow. And as I turn around and peer after Yes¬ 
terday and To-day as they plunge into the unfath¬ 
omable depths of the Fast, I cry, “ Yesterday, where 
art thou?” Out from the fathomless abyss of by¬ 
gone days comes the answer, “ Gone forever.” And 
I hear the Holy Ghost crying, “ To-day”! “To¬ 
day”! “To-day”! “The Holy Ghost saith, 
To-day.” 

VII. Because If We Do Not Come to Jesus 

Christ To-day We May Never Come At All 

I will give you one more reason why every 
man and woman in this auditorium who has not al¬ 
ready accepted Jesus Christ should not only accept 
Him but accept Him to-night, and that is, Because 
if we do not come to Jesus Christ to-day we may 
never come at all. That is not at all a remote pos¬ 
sibility. Thousands and tens of thousands have 
been as near to an acceptance of Jesus Christ as 
you are to-night and have said, “ Not to-night,” and 
now they have passed without Christ into that world 
in which there is no hope for repentance no matter 


214 1 HOW TO BE SAVED 

how “ diligently with tears ” we may seek it, into 
that world in which there is no opportunity to 
change our mind or our eternal destiny. 

A man came into one of our tents one night in 
Chicago. It was the first time he had ever been 
in a meeting of that kind in his life. The words 
of Mr. Schiverea, who spoke that night, made a 
deep impression upon him, and after the meeting 
was over he lingered with a friend and talked per¬ 
sonally with Mr. Schiverea. His friend accepted 
Christ and he was on the very verge of accepting 
Him. Mr. Schiverea said to him, “ You will accept 
Jesus Christ right now?” “ No,” the man said, 
' “ this is the first time in my life that I was ever in 
a meeting of this kind. I cannot decide to-night, 
but I promise you that I will come back Sunday 
night and accept Christ.” It was Friday night and 
there was to be no meeting on Saturday. Mr. 
Schiverea replied that he did not question at all the 
honesty of his intention or the sincerity of his 
promise to return Sunday night and settle it; but 
he added, “We have no guarantee whatever that 
you will live until Sunday night.” “ Oh,” the man 
said, with a laugh, “you don’t suppose that God is 
going to cut me off after the first meeting of this 
kind that I ever attended in my life and not give 
me another opportunity?” Mr. Schiverea replied, 
“ I do not know. But I do know you are taking 
a great risk in waiting until Sunday night. I greatly 
fear that if you do not accept Jesus Christ now you 
will never accept Him and be lost forever.” “No,” 
the man said, “ I give you my word that I will be 
back here Sunday night and accept Christ.” Mr. 


THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 215 


Schiverea continued to plead with him, but the man 
would not yield. He went out of the tent with his 
friend. They got into a carriage and turned toward 
home. And as they drove up the street they passed 
a saloon. The man said to his friend, “ Let’s stop 
and have one more drink and then we will both 
swear off.” “ No,” said his friend, “ I have settled 
it already. I have accepted Christ and I will never 
take another drink.” “ Well,” said the other, “ I’m 
going to have one more drink anyhow. You drive 
up the street and then come back for me and I will 
be waiting for you outside.” He entered the saloon. 
His friend drove up the street, and after a few min¬ 
utes returned to pick up his friend. He was no¬ 
where to be seen. He went into the saloon to look 
for him. He was not there. He went into the 
street again and looked up and down it for his 
friend, but he was nowhere in sight. Passing a 
high board fence he heard a groan and passing 
swiftly around behind it he discovered his friend 
lying behind it stabbed, with an awful gash in his 
body, unconscious and dying. He was taken to the 
Presbyterian Hospital and lived until Monday morn¬ 
ing, but never regained consciousness and passed 
into eternity unsaved, lost forever. Why? Because 
when “the Holy Ghost said, To-day” he said, “To¬ 
morrow.” So he passed unprepared into the pres¬ 
ence of God, and so will some of you, if you do not 
listen to the Holy Ghost to-night, as He saith, 
“ To-day.” 

One night when I was preaching in Bradford, 
England, a man and his wife sat side by side in the 


216 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


meeting and were deeply moved, but they made no 
decision, and gave no sign. As they walked away 
from the meeting the wife said to her husband, 
“ Would it not have been nice if you and I both had 
risen to-night and gone forward together and both 
accepted Christ?” He answered, “Yes, it would.” 
They reached home and retired. About two o’clock 
the following morning his wife awakened him and 
said, “ I feel so strange.” In a few minutes from 
that time she had passed into eternity. After he 
had laid his wife’s body away in the cemetery he 
came back to the meeting and told us this story and 
accepted Christ, but he came alone. Oh, men and 
women listen! Do you not hear the Holy Spirit 
crying, “ To-day.” 

There are so many things besides death that may 
make this the last opportunity you will ever have 
and make a refusal to-night final and fatal. Loss 
of opportunity may come. The Holy Spirit is here 
in power to-night. It is a great opportunity, the 
Day of Golden Opportunity. A like opportunity 
may never come again. It never will come again 
for some of you. “The Holy Ghost saith, To-day.” 

A hardened heart may seal your doom. When a 
human heart is moved upon by the Spirit of God 
as some of your hearts are to-night, and the heart 
continues to resist the Holy Spirit, it is likely to 
become very soon hardened and hopeless. 

One night in our church in Chicago, after the 
meeting in which many had accepted Christ, I re¬ 
mained talking with a young man. He was under 
deep conviction, within one step of a decision. I 


THE DAY OF GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY 217 


urged upon him an immediate acceptance and con¬ 
fession of Christ. “ No,” he said, “ I cannot do it 
to-night. But I will give you my word of honour 
that I will come back to-morrow night and do it. 
I told him I did not question his word or his in¬ 
tention ; but I said, “ I have no guarantee whatever 
that you will keep your word. I have a feeling in 
my heart that if you do not settle it to-night you will 
never come back.” “ Why,” he replied, “ my mother 
is here every night. We live within a block of this 
place. I give you my word of honour I will come 
to-morrow night and settle it.” Again I said, “ I 
do not question your word, but the Spirit of God 
is working mightily with you to-night, and if you 
go out of here resisting the Spirit of God, I believe 
your heart will be so hardened that your eternal 
destiny will be sealed and you will never come 
back.” “ No,” he said, “ I cannot accept to-night, 
but I will come to-morrow night and settle it.” He 
walked away. I watched him with a heavy heart 
as he passed out of the door. I said to myself, 
“ He will never come back,” and he never did. 
Quite a while later I asked his mother about him 
and she told me he had never come back into the 
church from that night. 

Men and women, listen! You cannot trifle with 
God, and you cannot trifle with your own souls, and 
you cannot trifle with the Holy Spirit. The Holy 
Spirit is not only saying in our text, but he is say¬ 
ing in your hearts to-night, “To-day! Right now! 
accept Christ.” Will you listen to the mighty, 
gracious Spirit of God? Will you do as He bids 


218 


HOW TO BE SAVED 


you? Will you listen right now and harden not 
your heart, but accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour, 
surrender to Him as your Lord and Master, and 
begin to confess to Him as such before the world, 
and be saved, and get right here and now the won¬ 
derful blessings that He gives and He alone gives? 


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with the people of the Far Fast. 

CLEMENTINA BUTLER 

Chairman, Executive Committee, 
American Ramabai Association. 

Pandita Ramabai (Sarasyati) 

Pioneer in the Movement for Education of the 
Child-Widow of India. Illustrated. $1.00. 

The story of Pundita Ramabai is in every way a re¬ 
markable one. She it was who first heard the cry of the 
child-widow of India. Without resources, herself a widow 
and surrounded by fanaticism and superstition, yet she 
made her voice heard. 

MRS. ARTHUR PARKER 

Sadhu Sundar Singh 

Fourth Edition. Illustrated. $1.25. 

This new edition contains a 28-page appendix reporting 
the Sadhu’s visit to England and America in 1920, hia 
experiences in Tibet in 1921, and his trip through 
Palestine and Europe in 1922. 

ROBERT E. SPEER , D.D. {Editor) 

A Missionary Pioneer in the Far East 

A Memorial of Divie Bethune McCartee. $1.50. 

“A story of wonderful achievement and is a striking 
illustration of how the missionary, when he has states¬ 
manlike qualities, touches the whole life of the nation 
Where he ministers.”— Christian Work. 










HELPFUL SERMONS 


JAMES I. VANCE , D.D ., LL.D. 

Pastor First Presbyterian Church , Nashville, Tenet, 

In the Breaking of the Bread 

Communion Addresses. $1.25. 

“A volume of communion addresses marked by deep 
spiritual insight and knowledge of the human heart. They 
are well adapted to awaken the spiritual conceptions which 
should accompany the observance of the Lord’s Supper— 
suggestions fitted for a communion occasion. The ad¬ 
dresses all bear upon the general theme of the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per and showed marked spirituality of thought and fervency 
of expression .”—United Presbyterian. 


TEUNIS E. GOUWENS Pastor Second Presbyterian 
— . Church , Louisville , Ky, 

The Rock That Is Higher 

And Other Addresses. $1.25. 

An unusually successful volume of discourses of which 
Dr. Charles S. Macfarland of the Church Federal Council, 
says: “Contents the intellect because it first satisfies the 
heart, and commands the incontestable assent of human 

experience. As I have read it I have found my 

conscience penetrated, my faith deepened and my hope 
Quickened.” 


W. RUSSELL BOWIE , D.D. 

Rector of St. Paul’s Church, Richmond, Vo, 

The Road of the Star 

and Other Sermons. $1.50. 

A volume of addresses which bring the message of 
Christianity with fresh and kindling interpretation to the 
immediate needs of men. The extraordinary distinction 
of Dr.. Bowie’s preaching rises from the fact that to 
great vigor of thought he has added the winged power of 
an imagination essentially poetic. 


JOSEPH JUDSON TAYLOR , D.D ., LL.D. 

Author of “ The Sabbatic Question “ The God of War," etc. 

Radiant Hopefulness 

$1.00. 

A message of enheartenment, a word of cheer, for men 
and women whose hearts have been fearful, whose spirits 
have been shaken in the turbulent times through which 
the world has passed in recent years, with which man¬ 
kind still finds itself faced. In this volume of addresses. 
Dr. Taylor points the way to comfort amid confusion, to 
peaceful harborage amid the prevailing storm. 
































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